Call of Duty
by Darkwood
Summary: Postseriesseason. Sally as a Preventer.
1. Day Off

I'm resting in my apartment when the buzzer goes off to let me know that someone downstairs is intending to visit me. I get up, brushing my hair back over my shoulders, and go to the panel. "Who is it?"

"Onna, would you just open the door?"

I blink, and my hand half-fumbles with the button as I press it. What in the world would bring Wufei here? And why now, on our day off? I nervously wait in my apartment, trying to find a relaxed pose for when he comes in, completely forgetting that I'll have to open the door until I hear the cold and polite knocking.

I chuckle to myself as I cross the room from the couch, wondering if I've ever described knocking as 'cold' and 'polite' before. I pull the door open and Wufei stands there, neutral expression turning puzzled as he takes me in.

Not that I can blame him. I don't wear my hair down at work, at all, and I rarely wear a skirt, or have a goofy, Maxwell-class grin on. "You wanted to see me, I take it?" I ask him, after noticing that his gaze is lingering a little longer than I feel comfortable with.

Instead of answering, he steps past me into my apartment, dropping his jacket across the back of my arm chair. "You've got a lot of furniture," he comments, stepping over to look out the picture window in the living room.

"I get that from my mother," I mention. He nods absently, as though he expected me to say something like that, and I close the door behind him finally. "Look, as glad as I am to see you again, Fei… this is my day off."

He turns to look at me, and for a second, the light catches in those chocolate brown eyes of his, and the evening orange bronzes his complexion. He's wearing a little half smile on his face and for once his expression, open, tender, unguarded, is directed at me. And he's letting me see it.

"It's mine too," he says with that little half smile. "Am I not allowed to see you outside of the office?"

That question catches me off guard. As a general rule, I don't see men, except when it comes to working. The few times I tried dating, it didn't work out. My father was very adamant about me marrying 'Chinese', and arranged most of my younger experiences with men. Usually boys I'd never met before, from traditional families. Dressed in suit and tie, they expected me to wear a dress and heels, put on lipstick and wear perfume and smile a lot. According to custom, it is the woman's job to please the man, but, as my father gratingly accepted after I sent the fourth of his arranged young men home with a frown on his face, there was simply too much of my mother in me for all the Chinese customs and traditions to stick.

"No, I guess there's no reason you can't see me," I admit, truly unable to find one. Wufei is someone even my father cannot truly disapprove of, when the chips fall down. His lineage, from what I read up on his colony after I found out which one he was from, is as old, if not older, than ours, and no one in his line was reasonably suspected to be American in any way, unlike my father's grandfather. If my father would still see me, I'm certain he would promote any sort of relationship with Wufei that Wufei would.

It's kind of hard since he disowned me when I left the Alliance. We haven't spoken in three years, and counting. This Christmas marks the anniversary of our last meeting. It was… at my mother's funeral.

"But is there some specific reason you stopped by?"

"I was in the neighborhood," that's an outright lie. The only way for Wufei to be 'in the neighborhood' is for him to drive or somehow get across town, which means traversing the entire distance of the downtown area, and it's late fall, the city isn't that warm and friendly to walking. Last time I checked, he didn't have a car… and he lives a block down from Headquarters, unlike me. I got this apartment purposefully to get away from work when I wasn't on-duty. "And I got hungry, and since I was near your apartment, I thought maybe I'd see if you wanted to come and get something to eat."

"Nice try, Wufei," I hear myself say. I don't identify myself with the voice coming out of my mouth, because I would never say something so self-assured and over-confident. "Now why don't you tell me why you're really here?"

He blinks, surprise and… something else, bubbling up from deep within those milk chocolate eyes. There is an edge to his response, before he opens his mouth. For a second, he seems unsure of himself, and I am half afraid that he's going to deny that I've caught him in an outright lie, but, thankfully, he smiles a little wider, a real smile, and says, "You caught me."

"Apparently," I respond, but have no idea what to do with him now that I've got him caught. "So, why are you really here?"

He shrugs, innocently, nonchalantly, and turns to inspect the plants I have lining the inside of my picture window, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jeans. "I spent the afternoon with Heero, and next thing I knew, I found myself at your doorstep."

Heero. A name I don't hear so often any more, since Relena evened whatever score she had with him. He, like Duo, chose not to join the Preventers after the Mariemaia Incident. He always scared me a little, despite the intense respect I had for him, I was never quite sure what he wouldn't sacrifice in the name of the mission. Wufei, though, seems unperturbed by his comrade's single-minded dedication to the mission, and I guess I can understand that. In his own way, Wufei was exactly the same. Just like Trowa, Duo, and Quatre.

No one outdoes Heero when it comes to dedication though. I love all the guys, but none of them ever blew themselves up for their … mission.

"No real reason? No motive?"

"Woman," his voice is neutral, not condescending, not gloating as it can be, and he says, "are you always this defensive?"

My answer, immediate and quick, makes me cringe, "Only around Chinese men."

Something peaceful in the air shatters, like a Ming vase falling onto hardwood floor and disintegrating into a million pieces.

He turns to look at me, and pounces on that statement, "What's wrong with Chinese men?" his voice, like a cat, arches it's back and hisses at me.

"Nothing," I say quickly, moving to the closet to get my coat.

"What are you doing?"

"You suggested we go get something to eat." He blinks, as though, in the past minute and all that has been shattered he has forgotten his offer. "That usually requires coats, especially when it's this cold outside."

He nods, and turns to face me, a little cloudiness in his brown eyes that tells me I won't get away with evading that last question so easily. I lift his jacket from the chair and offer it to him. He reaches for it, and then stops, as though the picture of me before him, hair down, wearing no makeup, strikes him for the first time in this instant, and says, "Your eyes are… not just blue."

I start to bristle, growing up I had been very proud of my blue eyes, but the awed look on his face, the reverence with which he imparts this new crystal of knowledge he has picked up about me, makes me bite my tongue.

"Yes," I respond, turning a little towards the door with one shoulder before brushing my hair back over my shoulder and letting it fall down my back in a long wavy river.

"I never noticed that before."

"Well…" I stall, trying desperately to think of something else to say that won't alienate him further, "I don't imagine you spend much time staring at them, at work."

I make a slight lean towards the door as well, suddenly very uncomfortable with having such an observant person inside my apartment, my safe haven.

"I suspect I don't," he comments, finally taking the hint that's becoming less and less subtle as the minutes pass. "Let's go then," he starts to lead the way out, but at the door he pauses to hold it open for me, and then closes it firmly, waiting while I lock up.

"Anywhere you had in mind?" I ask him as I tuck the keys into my coat pocket. In the other pocket I quickly stuff my wallet, wondering if we're going to be taking a taxi or if we'll be walking wherever he's decided we're going, and he seems to think for a minute.

I find myself holding my breath, waiting for him to speak in some monotonous, up-tight voice that holds an unhidden command. Echoes of every other experience I've had with someone identifiably Chinese…

But he throws me a curve ball.

"Where would you suggest?"


	2. Morning Hell

Bright and early Monday morning I wake up and fall back into my normal routine. Whatever kept me from being tired last night has worn off, because I can really feel just how early six a.m. is, especially after only having five hours of sleep behind it. After my shower, I head into the kitchen, fixing the tie around my neck absently.

The one thing I have yet to invest in is an automatic coffee machine, and for the millionth time, I wish that I had taken the plunge a while ago, so I wouldn't have to get up quite so early to swing by my favorite coffee shop on the way to work. The bagel pops out of the toaster, and I wrap it quickly in a napkin and tuck it into the outside of my briefcase on my way to the door.

For once, there's mail on the floor.

I pick it up and look for the return address. There isn't one.

I glance at my watch, and let out an audible curse, shoving the letter into my jacket pocket as I make my way quickly out the front door of the apartment, locking it behind me. I should have just enough time to get to the coffee shop and still make it to work on time, if I run.

Jogging down the steps from the seventh floor is, I learned the hard way, faster than waiting for the elevator. I jog past the bank of elevators and wave to the attendant as I hit the door to the stairwell with my shoulder in a move that would make any varsity football player proud.

"Late again, Miss Po?" Harry's voice calls after me into the stairwell. "Good luck!"

I love the people in my building, but sometimes I wish it was a little less of a community so that I could get in and out without so much talking. Fourth floor landing and I have to scrunch to one side to get around a couple dressed in impressive looking business suits. It's only seven a.m., what are they doing in the stairwell?

At the first floor door I swing a left and head into the garage level. One of the joys of being a senior operative is that I get to drive my own car to work.

If I ever meet the person who invented the automatic door unlocking device that came with my car, I'm going to lay a kiss on him that would give my poor, conservative father a heart attack. I toss my briefcase in the passenger's seat and start the car, pulling out of my space and out of the garage. The radio belatedly turns on, and the traffic report only reinforces what I can see before me.

"…hope none of you are trying to get downtown this morning because everything's backed up fourteen blocks due to a water main break on Main street…"

"Shit," I grumble, thumping my forehead against the steering wheel. "So much for coffee…" I reach into my glove compartment and pull out my sunglasses and my cell phone. I hit the office speed dial as I adjust the glasses on my face and wait patiently to make my turn out onto the street.

"Preventers Headquarters, this is Nancy speaking, how may I help you?"

"Nancy, it's Sally," I say, frowning as I glance at the traffic around me, and cringe to see a truck driver leering at me. "I'm stuck in traffic, so I'm going to be late this morning."

"Oh that's right, a water main broke on Main, didn't it?"

"No need to rub it in," I grumble.

"Sorry," she says in more of a sincere voice than I expected from her. "It's worth it for the apartment you've got though, if you ask me. I'll make sure to inform Miss Une about your situation as soon as she comes in."

I hesitate, "You…"

"Something else, Sally?"

"Nevermind. Thanks Nancy," we say our goodbyes and hang up.

There's no real reason to have her tell Wufei that I'm going to be late, is there? He'll figure it out, undoubtedly. Not that he'll really care…

I blink and smack myself in the forehead. Wufei is the least of my worries. There are so many more important things… like staying awake and keeping down road rage. Honestly, you'd think that if we can put colonies of human beings into outer space we could figure out how to overcome rush hour traffic, but no.

*

At HQ, I clock in, an hour late, and, grumbling, make my way into the elevators. "Hey Sally!" I turn and glance over my shoulder a little, glasses low on my nose.

"What's up, Jean?" I ask, holding the elevator doors for him. Jean is a file clerk, so we don't really do much talking, but he's generally a nice guy. Tall, brown hair, clear blue eyes. He fits his uniform beautifully, and has most of the women in the office drooling over him.

"We're switching over the filing system, so I'm going to have to ask you to redo your last set of reports," he says with a sympathetic smile.

"What?" I groan and lean against the back wall of the elevator. He obligingly pushes the button for the proper floor, and tucks a large file full of folders under his arm. "It took me two days to fill out those."

"I know, if there was any way I could keep you from having to fill out those papers, you can be sure that I would," he says, staring at me intently. "Are you ok? You look like you had a rough morning."

Third floor. This elevator is slower than the one in my apartment building, but I didn't have the energy to take nine flights of stairs up to the floor where my office is. "I had a late night last night, and then I got stuck in traffic."

"So that's why it's half past eight and you're still carrying your briefcase."

"Yeah," I say, turning to glance out the back of the elevator. The one good thing about this elevator, unlike the stairs, is that it has a nice view. The reinforced plate glass gives you a good view of the city, and a little of the harbor, if you're going to one of the upper level floors. "So what brings you to the tenth floor this morning?"

"All the field operatives have to refile their last reports, not just you, Sally. My aide is late, probably stuck in traffic too, and so I get to deliver the bad news in person."

"Wait a minute…"

"Yes, you're late for a department meeting."

I let my head droop and drop my briefcase to the floor of the elevator. Fifth floor. The elevator stops. Just one more delay in my morning, I guess. "I want to crawl under a rock somewhere and die."

Someone else gets into the elevator, and a calm voice says, "Melodrama doesn't really suit you, Sally."

I peek one eye open and look at the person who just got into the elevator. "Thanks for that vote of confidence, Trowa."

He gives me what passes for an amused look, on Trowa's face, and greets Jean.

"Trowa, if you're here, did I completely miss the meeting?"

"Not at all," he says, "Une said that it was important for you to be at the meeting, since it involves the upcoming assignments, so we waited for you to get here. I got paged to make my way up to the tenth floor since you clocked in."

Seventh floor.

"Well that makes me feel too special."

The three of us fall into an uncomfortable silence. Trowa's not much of a conversationalist. Of all the ex-pilots, he's the one that rivals Heero for quietest. I turn and glance out the window, thinking about last night. I never dreamed that spending time with Wufei could be so comfortable.

"Sounds like someone didn't get her coffee this morning," Trowa comments, leaning against the railing on the side of the car and turning his gaze out the window.

Dinner was calm, we avoided talking about anything relating to work at all, and somehow I managed to avoid explaining what I meant about being defensive around Chinese men. The conversation lingered on the restaurant I had chosen to go to, and the decorations. Wufei, apparently, is a big fan of the use of screens as a spatial supplement. We talked about painting, traditional and what we each enjoy looking at.

"Keep talking and you'll find out how much nicer I am when I've had my coffee," I mutter, folding my arms across my chest. Jean chuckles good naturedly.

Ninth floor.

"That's funny," Trowa quips, "usually people are glad to hear me talk."

That comment makes me stand up a little straighter and tip my sunglasses down so that I can look at Trowa. "Was that a joke?" I mutter.

"Could be," Jean responds.

Finally we've reached the tenth floor. I lean down and scoop up my briefcase and the three of us step out of the elevator. "I'm going to drop this stuff off in my office, I'll meet you in the conference room in a minute."

"I'll let everyone else know," Trowa says, making a left and heading towards the meeting room.

"Mind if I walk with you, Sally?" Jean asks, keeping step with me. "I've got to deliver these to the offices anyway. I'll just drop yours off with you and do the others after the meeting."

"Uh… sure," I say, and pull out my keys, unlocking my office door. It's dark inside, meaning that no one else has been inside it this morning. I reach over to flip on the light, and find Jean standing close behind me.

Very close, since I can feel his breath on my neck as I slip my jacket off.

Too close, I take a step into the office.

"Sally, there's something I've been meaning to ask you…"

I swallow, and glance up the few inches into his blue eyes. "Jean, I'm late for the meeting, and I've had a really bad…"

"Can I take you out for lunch?"

The question makes my voice trail off, and I belatedly finish my sentence, "…morning." We stand there a moment and then my mind catches up with itself. "I'll… answer you later, Jean, I've got to get to my meeting."

He starts to speak, but I put a hand on his chest and push him out the door, pulling the door shut behind me. "I've _got_ to get to my meeting," I repeat, turning and starting off down the hall, leaving him behind.

*

"What took so long, Sally?" Julia asks, reclining in a chair with her feet up on the table. I push her feet off my table space and take a seat, taking off my sunglasses and setting them at the top of my file folder. One of the junior field operatives, she's about as cheerful as Duo or Hilde on a sugar rush, most of the time. Blond hair, green eyes, and a figure that makes her the one woman that most of the people in the office were betting Jean was going to ask out.

"I don't want to talk about it," I say in a peevish voice.

Obviously they were wrong.

"You didn't get your coffee this morning," Julia comments, glancing me over. "You look like you didn't sleep too well either."

"Thank you for being the third person to notice that this morning," I snap. I usually don't mind Julia, but sometimes she can be more annoying than should be legally allowable.

The rest of the room quiets down as they hear me snap at Julia, and after a second of regarding me querulously, they turn back to their side conversations. Julia purses her lips, mumbles an apology, and turns to talk with Vladimir who is seated on the far side of her. I lean back in my own chair, and quietly wonder how this morning could get any worse, when someone sits down next to me.

I don't bother to look who it is, but a hand falls on my forearm on the armrests of the chair, and turns my hand. I turn to look at the person who's got a hand on me, and see Wufei. I start to speak, to protest, or something, and then I feel it. I didn't notice why he had taken my forearm in his, because the second I turned to look at him, I found myself trapped in his eyes.

But the warm Styrofoam cup he puts in my hand is unmistakable.

I start to speak, but Une walks in at that moment, and there's no more time for talking. "Well, now that we're all here, shall we get down to business?"


	3. A Thousand Interruptions

Back in my office, I sip the coffee and go over my new case. There's an inquiry being done into the activities of one of the L2 colonies, and I pulled the duty. There's a knock on my door and I call out a distracted, "Come in."

I look up, and almost wish I had pretended to be out.

"Have you had time to think of the answer yet, Sally?" It's Jean.

I start to speak, but behind Jean I can make out another figure. Just as tall, if not a little taller. "What's up, Trowa?"

Jean stiffens momentarily as I say that name.

"I was just checking in to see if the coffee you got was making you feel any better," he says, his visible eye narrowing at Jean. I have to wonder if Trowa didn't figure out what made me late to the meeting. He was the only other person that would've seen Jean and me walk off towards my office together.

But what's odder, I can't think of a logical reason why Trowa would care that Jean made me late for the meeting.

"Much, thank you. Remind me to thank Fei for bringing it."

Trowa nods, and folds his arms on his chest, looking Jean up and down predatorily. Jean turns and starts to say something to Trowa, but stops and looks away, "I'll… catch up to you later, Sally," he says, ducking out the doorway past Trowa.

"Not if I'm lucky," I mutter. Trowa remains leaning in my doorway and nods approvingly. "Thanks, Trowa…"

"Sally," he steps into my office and closes the door behind him, "are you interested in Jean?"

"What do you mean by that?" I ask, a little put off by that thought. What business of Trowa's is it if I _wanted_ to see him? What does he care? "What if I am?"

"Then I'd be a little worried about you," he says in a gentle voice. "I take it you aren't, then?"

Oh Trowa, always treating me like your sister. Catherine had a big impact on your life, obviously. "No, I'm not, but even so, I can take care of myself, Trowa."

An ironic smile flits across his face. "Sally, have you wondered why Jean, the catch of the office, hasn't gone out with anyone yet?"

"Sometimes…"

"Simple," he says, turning towards the door, "he's been seeing me."

I blink, gawk, and Trowa steps out of my office. Through the frosted glass I can see him move off down the hallway. If Jean and Trowa have been dating… why would Jean ask me to lunch? Puzzled, I lean back in my chair for a minute to think about it.

I take a sip of my coffee. Sure enough, it's the same kind I always get, hazelnut. When no answer presents itself easily, I shrug it off and go back to my report.

_…the company in question was, before the Incident, known to associate and have dealings with arms dealers. Until recently they were off the list of suspected suppliers in the black market, but information brought in points to dual production of mobile suits and weapons along with the company's normal inventory…_

There's another knock at the door. "Come in," I snap. If I keep getting interrupted like this I'm never going to finish reading this report.

"I understand that people have bad days, Sally, but you really oughtn't to take it out on your coworkers."

Apparently, this day _can_ get worse.

Une steps into the door. "I'm sorry, Miss Une, if I'd known…"

"I'm well aware that if you had known I was the one at your door you wouldn't have snapped like you did, Sally, you're more professional than that. I wouldn't have made you a Preventer if I hadn't, Water."

I sigh and lean back. Une takes a seat. "I see you're looking over your assignment… are you comfortable with the fact that you haven't been assigned a partner for this mission?"

I nod. "There's a difference between the work I've done in the past and this," I tap the folder. "Besides, surveillance is better completed by one person than two."

"If you get into anything over your head, Trowa and Wufei have a mission on L1. Be sure to contact the two of them for backup."

"Yes, ma'am."

Une stands. "Try and get some rest this week, I don't want you to get to L2 completely worn out. It would not only look bad, but you're going to be dealing with some heavy hitters on this mission, and it's best if you're at top form."

I hate it when people politely tell you to take some time off before you pass out. It's always well meant, but it always feels condescending. I'm not a child to most everyone who decides to give me these little pep-talks, so they need to mind their own business.

"Yes, ma'am."

She lingers a moment, as though about to say something else, and then nods, decisively, finally. She turns, and pauses at the doorframe to say, "I wish Noin were here. At least she would've known what to say."

I glance up at her retreating back from the report and my mouth drops open a little. The door remains open, and I see her smile and nod as she passes other people's doors. Yes, Noin would've known what to say, I think.

But Noin left, chasing her dream.

After another moment of silent contemplation on the now empty hallway, I turn back to my file. And I remember why I was so startled when Wufei said that to me yesterday, when he noticed my eye color.

Noin used to say the same thing.

*

"You know, Noin, you're staring off into space again," I commented once as we were loading up our transport ship.

Her eyes turned to focus on mine, but they remained glazed over slightly, and I knew she wasn't really seeing me. "Noin…"

Finally, she snapped out of it, and smiled a little lopsidedly at me. Her smiles were always graceful and serene. She was often lonely, but she always knew how to handle her situation, because she could survive on the memory of him.

"Sorry, Sally."

"You seem to do that quite often," I commented, tossing her the next box to be stowed away in the back of the cargo bay. In the lower gravity of the dock we were in, it sailed easily over to her, and she gave it a gentle nudge to send it into the ship.

"Your eyes," she said without looking at me.

I blinked, looking up from the crate I was holding to catch her profile. "What about them?"

"They're not quite blue."

"What do you mean by that?" I replied, on the offensive. As I mentioned before, I've always been quite proud of the fact that my eyes are blue.

"Don't take offense, Sally… please, I don't mean it that way. But your eyes aren't as blue as his are."

I began to understand. "Noin… Lucrezia… don't you mean _were_?"

She shook her head violently, motioning me to send her over the next crate. "Zechs isn't dead, Sally," she said it firmly. She had a habit, over the year I worked with her, to repeat that whenever she was scared or challenged.

I never could have quite the same faith in that missing man that she did.

But then, I wasn't in love with him.

I don't think I've ever been in love with anyone, really.

*

The text before me is blurred. I've been staring at it for a long while, and I finally admit to myself that I'm not going to get it read today. I close the folder and put it in the inbox on my desk. I glance at the clock, half an hour until lunch. With a sigh, I glance at the only other paperwork on my desk.

I was quite proud, on Saturday, that I finished the rest of my paperwork. Now I've got to resubmit the last report. I pick up the new form and glance over at my computer screen. All I have to do is copy over the information, it shouldn't take too long, I guess.

I'm just finishing the last of the data fields on the new form when I reach over for the Styrofoam cup that Wufei brought me and am disappointed to find it empty. I smile a little, twirling the pen in my hand a couple of times and double clicking its button to retract the ballpoint.

I guess today is just my day to remember quaint things about Wufei.

The little things he noticed scare me. Like how he got me the right kind of coffee this morning, probably just by smelling the coffee beans. We went to the same coffee shop where I get coffee before work after dinner, since it's open twenty-four hours, and we were in the restaurant until it closed.

Something in the air startles me out of my realization, probably the fact that I was slumping over my desk, half falling asleep, and I look at my watch. Blissfully, it's lunch time. I scoop up the paperwork from my desk, and grab my jacket from near the door. I'll drop this off with Jean's aid on my way out to lunch.

I step out of my office and lock the door behind me. Down the hall to the right I can see Trowa leaning against the doorframe to his office, talking quietly with Wufei. I wave at the two of them and make my way to the elevator.

As usual, the thing takes forever to get to the right floor. And just about everyone takes lunch at the same time, so it's bound to be packed. I pull my jacket on and zip it up, eyes glued to the display above the doors that tell me what floor the car is on, like staring at it will make it move any faster.

"Going to lunch?" Without turning I know it's Wufei.

It's not that he's got an unmistakable voice or anything, I just can't help but recognize it.

"No," I quip, "I'm going to go dig my grave," I mutter. When I finally turn to look at him, I wish I hadn't said that. He's got an incredulous look on his face, and, dare I say it… he almost looks a little concerned.

"I can see you're in a mood," he responds, reaching over to press the button for the elevator again.

"That doesn't make it go any faster," I say, trying to find some common ground. We stand in silence, and I look up at the display. The fifth floor is lighted. "Thank you."

"For what?" he asks, and even though I'm not looking, I can almost hear the little smirk on his lips.

"Bringing me coffee this morning."

He nods and doesn't say any more about it.

We stand in silence for a long moment, the two of us staring at the little lighted display in futile hope. I glance at him sidelong, from the corner of my eye. As though he can feel my careful glance, he straightens his shoulders and folds his arms across his chest. One thing I can say for Wufei, in the years I've known him, he's definitely grown into his profile. It's striking. He caught up with me when it comes to height, and almost, by maybe an inch or two, he's taller.

I hear the carpet crunching under footsteps, someone comes up behind us. I turn slightly, and notice it's Trowa. "So, what's your mission about?" I ask, casually pressing the button for a third time. It can't hurt, now.

"There's a hostile group of terrorists that are probably going to make a move towards independence on L2."

"I thought the Preventers generally agreed to leave successions from the Earth Sphere to the police…"

"We did," Wufei says, still with his eyes trained on the display above the elevator doors. "But that was before the President decided to decrease the funding for the police force. Now it's apparently been foisted off into our jurisdiction again."

Trowa shrugs and leans against the wall off to the side of the elevator doors. "What's with the folder? Paperwork during lunch?"

"I was going to drop it off in the records department on my way out."

Trowa's visible eye narrows slightly. "I was on my way down there."

I smile at him, a friendly smile. "Want to drop this off in the office for me then? I'm really in no hurry to get down there."

"Really?" Trowa asks, seeming a little surprised.

No, Trowa, I'm planning on fighting with you over a man I'm not in the least interested in, really. I hold out my hand with the file in it. "All yours."

He smiles at me. Wufei, on the other hand, has noticed our little exchange, and narrows his eyes slightly, glancing at me seriously. I can read the look on his face. It says, 'Is there something you aren't saying?' and he turns it on Trowa as well.

Finally, the elevator arrives, and the doors open.

Just as I suspected, it's packed. Trowa steps in, and I move to get in the elevator after him, but Wufei's hand falls on my forearm as I start to step across the threshold.

The elevator doors close.

"All right, what was that about?" I ask, an edge in my voice. "If you've got something to ask me, or something to say… you could've said it after lunch, couldn't you?" With a roll of my eyes, I shove my hands into my coat pockets and start off towards the stairs, which are at the end of the hallway.

Wufei follows me, wordlessly.

"Aren't you going to say _any_thing?" I ask, piqued.

"What do you have to do with Jean?"

His quiet question almost gets lost in the squeak of the stairwell door as I shove it open. I turn to look at him as I start down the stairs. "Nothing, why?"

"It's obviously something. Trowa wouldn't be so defensive about hearing you were going down to the records room if there wasn't."

I shrug, and as Wufei says something else, I tighten my hands into fists. "I don't think you're telling me the whole truth."

That's when I feel the letter again, and pause at the landing to take it out of my pocket. "He tried asking me out," I mumble, starting down the stairs again.

"What did you say?"

"I didn't." I flip the envelope over, wondering who it's from. There's no return address sticker over the back side either, and so I slide my thumbnail under the seal and open it.

"Don't you find Jean attractive?"

A little uncomfortable with that question, I don't respond, but continue to work the envelope open. It's stuck securely, and it's annoying to have a ripped up envelope.

We've reached the first floor landing. I didn't realize I was walking so quickly down the stairs. Wufei repeats his question.

"What's it to you if I am?" I say, voice a little arch. He winces a little, and swallows. We cross the lobby and out to the street and the traffic is still thicker than four week old pea soup.

I stuff the letter back into my pocket and start off down the street. For a moment, Wufei lags behind, but eventually he catches up to me, jogging a little. "Where are you going to lunch?"

"I'm not sure yet, but after wasting fifteen minutes on an elevator I didn't take, it'll have to be somewhere close."

"Here," he says, stepping quickly around in front of me to stop me. I glare at him momentarily and then sidestep, starting off down the sidewalk again. "Sally, this is a restaurant."

I must really be zoning out without my normal level of caffeine. It's impossible to tell that I get a double espresso shot in my hazelnut, apparently, just by scent. It was just good coffee, nothing with a kick in it. I stop and glance at the front window.

Wufei nods and motions me inside the door, which he proceeds to open.

My stomach growls as soon as the aroma from inside hits me. Whatever it is, it's good. Folding my arms, I step inside.


	4. Third Degree

There's still three days until I get on my shuttle to L1. Leaning in the elevator, I glance over at Wufei. He leaves in the morning. After the fiasco in traffic yesterday, since the water main is still giving the city public workers problems, I decided to commute to work. I made it in time to get my own coffee, and got here the same time Wufei did.

Our hellos were warmer than the air temperature outside, but then I guess it isn't hard, since it's mid-January. He held open the door, and we walked each other over to the elevator. "New gloves?" he asked casually as I pressed the button to bring the snail car down to the lobby level.

"I got them as soon as the cold snap hit," I responded.

"I'm going to get a new pair before Trowa and I head off to L2, any recommendations on where to buy them?"

Pleasant, friendly conversation. No harm, no foul.

I set my briefcase down, and slip the gloves off my hands. I feel his eyes on me as I move, and it's a little unsettling. But, all in all, not an entirely unpleasant feeling. I stuff the brown leather into my jacket pocket, and find the rumpled letter I started to read on my way to lunch yesterday.

In the confusion of the afternoon, I must've forgotten about it.

Once we got back from lunch, our second meal together in two days…

I started to pay this time, really I did… but Wufei wouldn't let me.

It wasn't a date.

He doesn't… and I certainly don't, _date_.

No one else, and not each other.

… once we got back, there was a message for me in my office, and while trying to defrost my numb fingers on my desk lamp, I nearly burnt myself. The message, of all things, was an invitation to a wedding.

And not just any wedding, mind you, but Noin and Z-

I suppose I should really start thinking of him by his 'real' name. Although if you ask me, anyone who runs around using a different name for fourteen years should plan on sticking with it for the rest of his life. Lucrezia and Milliardo's wedding.

Attached to the invitation was a letter, handwritten, from the woman herself. She said, basically, that she knew I wouldn't likely be able to be there in person, and that she didn't expect a wedding present or anything, but that she thought I should know what was going on with her life. It touches my heart, something that I am beginning to think is made of marble and granite, to think that she cares enough about me to send something like that, just for the hell of it.

At the end of the letter, along with the expectations of a reply in general, she asked me if I was seeing anyone.

I jotted out a quick immediate response to her questions, there were a few others about HQ and our coworkers, and said that a more personal response would follow. The date of the wedding was soon, far too soon for me to take time off and hop a shuttle or pilot one out to the terra project's quadrant, so I'm pretty sure she never really intended for me to show up. It was scheduled for the fourth day of my investigation into Exian Corporation's business dealings, and so I included in the short response that I would unfortunately be on assignment the day of her wedding.

I think I made some inane joke about there being no rest for the wicked.

I avoided her final question as though she never wrote it, the same way I avoided talking about it when we were partners.

But I couldn't get the question out of my head all afternoon, while I was trying to review the rest of my mission specifications and the data sheets that were included in the Exian file folder.

I gave up and clocked out early, leaving to battle rush hour. I got home and promptly fell asleep.

I shift the tall Styrofoam cup into my other hand and pull the letter from my pocket. Unfolding things one-handedly is difficult, but I manage not to spill any of my precious double-espresso hazelnut while I open the thing.

So now, here I am in the elevator with another half-perused scrap of written, I glance at the page and correct myself, typed, correspondence, from someone. Wufei politely averts his eyes from the letter, but I know he's not just staring out the back of the elevator.

I get through the first paragraph, and the steaming elixir slips from boneless fingers and crashes against the floor of the elevator, dousing my right leg in the process.

"Sally?" Wufei's voice shows his concern, I note absently, my hand clenching on the letter. "What's wrong?"

My vision is going blurry, I'm not sure if it's from the pain of the burns on my leg or the shock of what I'm reading. Wufei takes a step closer, and ventures to wave a hand in front of my eyes before bringing it to rest on my shoulder.

I can smell his scent strongly, it contrasts with the coffee. He smells like green tea and tiger's bone. Must work out before coming to work. No wonder he's always so awake. His fingers tighten reassuringly, enough to bring my eyes up to his, but nowhere near tight enough to bruise me, and I feel myself falling apart as I stare into the mahogany pools of his eyes. "What's happened?" he asks again, firmer.

He's steady, which is more than I can say for myself. I am leaning bonelessly against the back of the elevator, and his grip on my shoulder is all that's keeping me from crumbling into the steaming puddle of aromatic caffeine at our feet. The elevator feels small and cramped around me, the perfunctory ventilation barely letting in enough air to breath. It's hot, but I'm freezing.

I find my faltering, shaking voice, and manage to stammer, "My father…"

He prompts me to go on, silently, his gaze rigid enough to keep me upright, and I hear the ding of the elevator somewhere far off.

"He's dying."

*

The doors of the elevator opened, and Wufei strong-armed me out, on the fourth floor, while a couple secretaries got in. He then proceeded to march me into the infirmary to have my leg looked at.

I'm reclining in the infirmary now, staring up at barely lit paneled ceiling. White and shades of gray, a little black. There's a cold compress on my leg to keep the swelling down, and Lady Une has come in to have a look at me already. I made a very bad joke about how coffee shops need to have warning labels on their products, and she smiled a little falsely before saying that she'd have fresh regulation uniform sent in for me to change into as soon as the doctor that had been called in to examine me said I could get up.

That must be him now. I prop myself up a little more, and can see my face in the mirror across from the bed. Can that really be me? Pale skin, dark circles under the eyes, haunted expression? My eyes don't look blue at all, right now, but instead some gloomy gray. Through the lighted doorway, I see the nurse conversing with someone… someone familiar.

Wufei.

He stayed…

I start to sit up a little more, but a gentle hand on my shoulder stops me.

"Mind if I have a look at the burn _before_ you get mobile again, Preventer Po?"

I blink, "Jerry… who called you in?" Jerry Summers is a college of mine from back in the Alliance days. He's a damn good doctor, I just had no idea that he had been dog-eared by the Preventers as someone trustworthy enough to be called in on accidents and emergencies. Brown eyes, blond hair, barely five and a half feet tall, he reminds me of a picture I once saw of my mother and a young boy I can only assume was her brother. My uncle. Jerry's always treated me as good as if I was family, but he's nowhere near old enough to be that unknown uncle.

"The nurse on duty, if you must know." He lifts the paper-thin sheets back to reveal my bare legs, and winces slightly at the sight of my right leg. The flesh is all pink, when he removes the compress, but it doesn't appear to be blistering at all. "It could be worse," he says, "but then I'm sure if you've collected your wits back about you, you know how bad this is." He starts writing things on a pad, "I'm going to recommend you not do too much walking around for a couple days, but other than that, if you let it breathe and put some of this prescription I'm writing you on it, you should be just fine by the end of the week."

"Let it … breathe?"

He grins wryly at me. "Sorry, Sally, but I'm going to have to ask you to wear a skirt."

I roll my eyes tolerantly, remembering the old joke amongst us in the Alliance Medical Corps. It was a rumor that the reason I worked so hard to get promoted to Lt. Commander was so that I wouldn't have to wear the skirts that the lower level doctors' aides had to wear, which were nothing more than glorified nurses' habits. In a way, it was true. The nurses' habits did nothing for their figures, but the idea that a trained soldier should run around in a skirt while carrying a gun was utterly laughable to me.

But it was only six weeks after I got that promotion that I quit the Alliance and went home…

My vision is slightly blurry, but I bite back the tickle in my throat and smile at Jerry. "I think that it's ok, but just this once, Jerry."

"That's a good patient. And a good doctor," he adds with a wink. "If I'm not mistaken, there's a clean uniform waiting for you outside, shall I have the nurse bring it in?"

I nod, and he covers me back up with the sheet. He turns and steps outside, and I sink back down to the pillows for a moment, closing my eyes.

This can't really be happening.

That stubborn old man won't ever kick the proverbial bucket.

…will he?

The door opens, I hear the noise of the hinges as they squeak in the silence of the room. Someone crosses to the bed, and a folded uniform skirt is set on the end of my bed. "You're allowed to return to your office as soon as you feel up to it, Miss Po," the nurse says, stepping back outside without another word.

I recline in the bed, and listen to the silence. The skirt must be almost brand new, I can smell it from a few feet away. Muffled voices from outside make their way through the door. The transmitted sound is low and muffled, but I can make out two distinct voices.

I tune them out as best I can, and pull the paper thin sheets up to my chin, trying to get a little more comfortable on the thin, cardboard mattress. I close my eyes, and all I can see is my reflection in the mirror.

But eventually, I give up trying to sleep. I had too much of that cup of scalding coffee before it spilled on me to get any rest now. Gingerly, I sit up, and swing my bare legs over the edge of the bed. I unfold the skirt and stand myself up into it, slipping it haltingly over my burnt leg.

My boots, I find, were stowed under the bed by some thoughtful person, but one of my socks is soaking in toffee colored liquid, so I sigh. I glance at the only other item on the bed. The dumbest looking leggings in the world were politely folded underneath the skirt.

I contemplate slipping them on, if only to have something keep my foot from chafing in the combat boots I have to wear with my uniform, but the nerve endings in my burnt leg take that minute to remind me of the abuse I've just inflicted on them, and so I tuck the leggings into my jacket and hobble over to the sink to wring out my sock before putting it back on.

No other mirror in the room, just the one next to the door, and so I avoid looking myself in the eye. This entire situation is too incredible, too outlandish.

What's going to happen is that I'll call home, and my father will answer the phone. He's going to berate me for not calling him sooner, and then we'll have an awkward conversation for about five minutes. It'll end, the way they always used to, with him asking if I've found a husband yet.

My mother used to say that since she wasn't Chinese enough to be the acting mother of his children, so that my father had to take on the roles of both parents. She said that father thought that we would loose something of ourselves if he didn't do what he did.

I think he was just raised too stringently.

My brothers never had this problem with my father. Lin and Samuel were my father's favorites. He knew how to be a parent to them. He once told me that my brother's were shadows of people, because of something he did wrong earlier on in life, but that I was given a whole soul, a warrior's spirit, he said. I was the child that would truly determine the future of his family, and that it was the will of his ancestors that it be so. He seemed sad when he said this.

I guess I can understand why. Lin and Samuel both look more Chinese than I do. They can both speak Mandarin and Cantonese fluently. Lin knows Hakka, Taiwanese, and Shanghai as well. Samuel, though he doesn't speak Taiwanese, speaks Hokkien. I can name half a dozen languages that I can read and write, but I'm barely able to speak Mandarin, and the most I can say in Cantonese is "hai gum seen -1-", "bak chee -2-", and "ban yeh -3-". Nothing that would help me survive if I ever had to do more than impress someone with a common phrase or two. The only reason I know any of those phrases is because Lin used them when referring to the blind dates my father set up for me, and when I asked him, he kindly translated the words.

I slip the chill, damp sock on and shove my foot carefully into my boot, muttering another phrase that pops into my head, "Ho fan ah," I spit, turning to look at myself in the mirror. I can't see much, just the outline of my body in the darkness. The window blinds are half closed, and with the overcast sky, not much light is coming into the room. I reach over and flip on the light, and blink, my face almost nose to nose with the mirror.

"Wow," I stand up straight, slowly, so as not to aggravate my burn, I look over myself in the mirror. This must be why Noin consented to wear the women's uniform that the Preventers issue. I turn to the side and am shocked.

Unlike most uniform skirts, it's neither matronly nor is it too tight to work in.

I guess that's one I owe Lady Une. After working in that outfit she had in Oz, she must've learned a thing or two about comfort and flexibility.

I glance at the bed, and reach over to pick up my jacket. The smooth material feels pleasant under my fingertips, and the familiar smell of myself on my jacket make me smile a little. As I lift it from the infirmary bed, though, I feel a slight chill. That letter in the pocket almost seemed to be waiting for me, before, to see what I would do. How I might react, like a good daughter or a bad one.

I slip the jacket on, and zip it up as far as it goes. For once, I hope I responded how a good daughter would. I reach for the doorknob, and can't, for the life of me, figure out why.

***

-1- 'hai gum seen' is a Cantonese phrase roughly translating to a departure message. One of it's usages is when a date drops you off.

-2- 'bak chee' is a Cantonese phrase for idiot. Re: Baka in Japanese, I think.

-3- 'ban yeh' is a Cantonese response to bullshit. It means something along the lines of "(you are being) pretentious".

_The translations and Cantonese were taken from the site Hok Yeh Hai Si Hau La Leng Chai. It's one of the sites I use for research in foreign language. As the languages mentioned in this chapter are liable to show up in other chapters, expect more translation notes._


	5. Temerity

The infirmary is the farthest area of the second floor from both the elevators and the staircase. The walk to get off this floor is long, and painful. I have to pass through the cube farm -1-, and force myself to concentrate on just putting one foot in front of the other.

Again, my nerves decide to remind me that I've abused them, and pain shoots up my right leg, the pulse of my blood suddenly painful. I stumble into one of the sections of temporary wall units, and in less than a minute, heads have popped up everywhere. I frown a little and force myself upright. I start walking again, and I can hear the whispers. The prairie dogging -2- has begun.

I'm surprised they didn't all look up the minute I walked into the wing of bad fluorescent lighting and cage-sized cubicles. I make it to the elevator, and I can feel eyes on my back. I press the button to bring the car down to take me up to my own floor.

I've never felt so small before. I hate this.

I'm very glad that the field operatives are at least friendly to each other when someone gets hurt. There isn't the necessity of all this useless gossiping when everyone has real work to do.

Not that the grunt file clerks don't, but the work they do makes it much easier to get bored, and bored people look for whatever source of entertainment they can find.

I guess today it's me.

I press the button again.

"You should all just shut _up_ already!" a clear voice rings out.

I don't dare look back over my shoulder, but I want to know who the sensible person is, and why the woman's voice sounds so familiar.

The not-quite-whispering continues. I can hear someone, close by, commenting on the skirt I have on, and someone else points out that my right leg looks like a tomato.

"Can it, would you?"

Courageous woman. I should at least have the guts to turn around and offer her a grateful smile. I glance over my shoulder, and find that the speaker is standing up on her desk, glaring at her coworkers.

"You should all be ashamed of yourselves," she has short black hair in a boy's haircut, and pale skin. "Sally's a good operative, she doesn't deserve all these stupid rumors you're starting about her."

"Jeez, Schbeiker," a man off to our right says, "can't we have any fun?"

"Hilde?" I ask, incredulously.

She half-turns towards me, and smiles a little to accompany her sympathetic wink. "Go on and get in your elevator, Sally, let me handle this."

I start to speak, but behind me the elevator makes it's mechanical chime and the doors open. I guess she's got things under control… I turn and hobble my way into the elevator, glad to find it empty. The doors close on Hilde's parting words, "You want to make something of that comment, George?"

I didn't know Hilde worked here. Last I heard, she and Duo had a scrap yard on L2. Something must've happened that I don't know about, because she'd never have left it if Duo were still working there. From time to time she even used to help us out on missions in the area, since she had the right kind of contacts to know things pertinent to our investigations.

And if she didn't, then Duo always did. I haven't seen his face since the shuttle that took he, Trowa, and I back to earth from X-18999. Just before Earth we all parted ways, the two pilots hopping onto one of the smaller transports on the shuttle to go and meet up with Quatre at the rendezvous point to pick up their Gundams. But usually when I need information, I find an email or a short burst of transmission that's unmistakably Duo-esk.

Neither Wufei nor Trowa ever talk about where Duo is now. The most I ever hear about any of the non-Preventer ex-Pilots from the two that I work with was on Sunday when Wufei said that he had spent part of his day with Heero. But Wufei didn't say a word about what Heero was up to, or how he was.

Quatre's the one that it's easy to keep track of. Winner Corp is still the biggest company in ESUN, and after the public unrest on the general topic of the Gundams, Quatre resurfaced as the owner and president of the company. Not that the company is a dictatorship, with twenty-nine sisters sharing stock, and at least fifteen on the Board of Directors, I'm sure Quatre's become quite the diplomatic acrobat when it comes to dealing with the business.

I try not to think about the space of the elevator, the smell of cleaning solution is strong in the closed space, and the floor, as I shift my wait, is still a little slick, meaning the must have only recently gotten the coffee cleaned up. The ventilation hasn't lowered the concentration of chemicals in the air to the point where many people should be in the elevator at once yet. I probably shouldn't be in here myself, come to think of it.

I don't really care.

I must be really distracted, because the elevator ride up to the tenth floor doesn't take nearly as long as it did yesterday. The doors open, and I step out, hobbling down to my office and fumbling with my keys. I glance at my watch as I push the door open, and see that it's just about eleven.

I'll take lunch after two, to make up the hours I missed this morning, I guess.

My briefcase is seated on the middle of my desk, and I just now remember that I didn't carry it. There seems to be a note next resting against it.

I'm wary of that. I don't want any more notes, no more letters, I'd like to curl up into a ball and forget that this morning ever happened. So long as I never have to see another paper envelope with my name on it.

I cross to my desk and gingerly sit down. The envelope has my name in printed letters that look almost like they're typed. I take a deep breath and open the envelope.

It's from Une's secretary. I smile a little. Only my boss would bother to have her secretary type out a short get well soon note, along with varied instructions on how I shouldn't come to work tomorrow if I don't feel up to it, and I'm allowed to go home this afternoon to get some rest.

I'd rather not, thanks, Missy. Missy put a smiley face on the bottom with a personally scrawled addition that everyone hopes that I feel better.

As though they know that the reason I spilled the scalding hot coffee on myself was because my father is dying somewhere in China. I may not be on speaking terms with the man, but the last thing I want is for him to die without me being there. Samuel won't make it, of course… but Lin might be there.

If he's forgiven father, of course.

Samuel died during the Eve Wars, after I quit the Alliance. My father was always very proud of his son's decision to join the Alliance, more proud of Samuel's decision to join the military than with mine, though he accepted that I enlisted after a while. Part of the reason I quit the Alliance was because of the needless death of my brother Samuel. My father refused to believe that was why I was quitting the Alliance, he thought I was being childish and stupid.

Lin argued with father about it, and the two of them had a falling out. Lin moved away from home shortly after that, despite mother's protesting. She was already getting sick, then. I went home to visit her, shortly after meeting Wufei for the first time, and she smiled and told me that her strength had followed Samuel.

She was glad to see me, though, I can remember it well. There was something she said that struck a chord within me.

*

"Sai Lei," she hated that people shortened my name. She had taken great pains to pick it out for me before I was born, and she called 'Sally' a cheap bastardization.

"It's good to see you again, mother," I responded.

"I was almost worried that you weren't coming home…"

"I'm sorry for his loss." I was, but Samuel was never my favorite brother. Lin and I were always closer than Samuel and I were. The problem with Samuel was that he and I tried to hard to disobey our father. Though he could speak all those languages, and read them as well, Samuel never spoke Chinese around my father. He wouldn't use it in the house if our father was due home, or even after he'd gone to bed.

Somehow, Samuel was still father's favorite.

Lin should have been, he was very quiet, and very studious. A good son, according to custom. Whenever father or mother got sick, he was right there to take care of them, calling a doctor if it got to serious, taking time off from school to go and work.

"There's something in your eyes," my mother said, cutting off my thoughts. "What's made you so different, child?"

I couldn't understand how she would know what was going on with my life, or that I had started running into the gundam pilots. After meeting Heero, I had been staggered, after meeting Wufei, I had been calmed. The other rebels said that they noticed it, after he left. The fact, one of them said, that I was going home to visit my parents, meant that 'that kid' had affected me more than either I was willing to admit, or more than I knew myself.

"My new job," it was one of the only lies I ever told my mother, and from the look she gave me in response, her blue eyes narrowed slightly, one blond eyebrow arched finely, I knew she didn't believe me. "I'm working at a hospital…"

"Sai Lei, you shouldn't tell such lies," my mother snapped. She sounded very much like my father at that moment. As a child, he could see right through me, and it scared me. He said that if I worked very hard, one day I might be able to do the same, but I was so angry each time that he caught me lying to him that I never bothered to try. It scared me that he could see through me so easily. It made me feel vulnerable, and naked, whenever he was around.

"How-"

"No hospital would make you smell like gunpowder," she said quietly. I started for a minute, and then laughed, I knew she had caught me, just as surely as my father always used to. She smiled a little, and I sat down and poured tea for the two of us.

There was a long, comfortable silence in the small, uncomfortable living room. My father was at work, thankfully, he still refused to admit that he had as disobedient a daughter as me, and that I had quit the Alliance. I think, somehow, he always blamed me for the mistake that Heero made because of Treize's trick, just like he thought that it was my fault Samuel died.

As though I somehow could've stopped either attack.

"Tell me about him," my mother said softly, eyes trained carefully on her teacup.

I've only met my grandmother, my mother's mother, once, but from the stories the old woman told me, when I was sixteen, always gave me the impression that my mother, with her long, wavy blond hair, was a bit of a wild woman before she married my father. My grandmother told me that my father had a very calming affect on my mother. I noticed, at that instant, that it was true. Somehow my father had made my mother into a damn good approximation of a traditional Chinese woman, for all the fact that she was American.

*

There's a knock on my door. I glance up from the note, and tip my briefcase over on it's side before calling for whoever it is to come in. The doorknob turns and I glance at my watch.

Lunchtime, already?

"Sorry to intrude on you, Sally…"

Oh no, I take a deep breath. It's Jean.

I look up to see his figure framed by my doorway, but blink a few times, trying to tell if there really is someone behind him. There is.

Wufei.

He whispers something that only Jean can hear, and Jean gets a wincing expression on his face, before smiling and stepping aside. Wufei winks at me as he closes the door in Jean's face.

"What was that all about?"

"Jean's a nice man, but he's going to have to learn a thing or two about fidelity." Wufei crosses to look out my window, running the horizontal blinds so that they're open instead of blocking light, and stares out at the city.

"You say that pretty casually. Mean anything specific by it?"

Wufei glances at me from the corner of his eye and remains silent. I shrug and set my briefcase on the floor, leaning back in my chair a little to stare at the ceiling.

"How are you feeling?"

"All right, I guess."

"You guess?" he turns to face me, leaning one shoulder against the window frame, folding his arms low in front of him. "You look tired."

"Maybe I am," I say quietly, stretching my neck out, and letting my hair fall over the back of the chair. "What about you?"

"I'm fine," his voice is tight. I've come to realize that means there's something he isn't saying. He keeps speaking, however, not giving me the chance to corner him on it. "Trowa and I leave in the morning."

"I know," I say, hoping to keep the sigh out of my voice. I… I'm really going to miss him, I realize for the first time.

"Don't hesitate to call us if you need backup," he adds, eyes tracing the profile my position gives him. "I don't want…"

I sit up straight and look at the door. "Have you had lunch yet?"

"After another free meal?" he asks, but in his voice, I can see the same smile that's always there as he tips the waiter.

"No," I say, pushing my chair carefully back from the desk. "But last I checked, you usually only work half a day before you leave on assignment." I stand up and turn to face him, holding up the re-folded letter. "I'm allowed to leave if I don't feel well."

His face registers confusion, and I smile a little, licking my lips.

"I don't feel well, to tell you the truth. I feel rotten. I'm hungry, I'm feverish, and I don't want to be here right now." I reach for my jacket, and he stands up, away from the wall, and steps over to help me put it on.

His hands linger on my shoulders, and he asks quietly, "You want me to take you home?"

I turn my eyes away from him, towards the door, and shake my head. "No. I'm not up to being alone right now," I say in a quiet tone of voice. "I-"

"I understand," he says, cutting me off. "Still got your gloves?"

"Yeah, why?"

He smirks a little and opens my door again. I step out, and he follows, waiting on me to lock the door before leading be down the hallway, half a step in front of me.

"I didn't bring my car today."

"It's fine," I mutter, glancing around and feeling guilty. I don't do this sort of thing. I don't just pick up and walk away from work without my briefcase, without clocking out… well I never clocked in today, but still. "We can get a cab."

"I'm not leaving it here while I'm away," he says, we round the corner and manage to catch the elevator just as Trowa's stepping in. He's got his briefcase in hand, and his jacket on too.

I knew Wufei had a tendency to not stay the whole day before a mission, but I never noticed that Trowa took half the day before off as well. Wufei nods to his partner amidst the dense elevator, and with the faint pressure of his hand on the small of my back, he guides me to the back corner of the elevator, and stands half a foot back from where I'm standing, to give me room.

I can smell his scent again, calming, reassuring. If I close my eyes it smells like the dojo where Lin had kung fu lessons when I was young. I would have to wait outside, of course, because it was between home and school, for me, but every time he came out the sliding door would open and I could smell that same scent. Lin was a good older brother, and we got along well. What little I know of Cantonese, he taught me. What little I care for our Chinese heritage is because of him.

Wufei reminds me of him, a little. But there's something in Wufei's eyes… in his spirit, that was always missing in Lin's. I close my eyes and recline my head in the corner of the elevator, waiting for the slow trip down to be over, and for whatever Wufei was trying to explain to me to make sense.

At the lobby, the elevator empties out, except for the two of us. I start to get out, and he shakes his head, one hand stopping me by resting on my forearm gently.

With a shiver I huddle back into the elevator, and wait some more.

He steps out on the garage level, and I follow.

That's when I see it.

No, he didn't bring his car…

He brought his motorcycle.

I pause.

"What's wrong?" his voice is gentle, he's taking out a helmet for me.

I glance down at myself, and then back at his motorcycle.

"Sally?"

"Fei… I'm wearing a skirt." He blinks, and looks down at my lower half, possibly for the first time since he walked into my office fifteen minutes ago. It's reassuring that he doesn't spend so much time staring at me that he already thought about the logistics of me on his motorcycle.

"It's kind of cold to be wearing that, Sally," he comments, offering me the helmet in his hands. "Your leg looks a lot better."

I glance down, and nod, taking the helmet. "You know I'm going to freeze on that thing."

"Aren't your uniform pants dry yet?"

"Jerry wants me to leave my burn open to the air so that it doesn't blister too badly." I glance down at the helmet, and see my reflection in it. I look downtrodden, and sad. It makes me blink. I look up at Wufei and find his eyes on me. He reaches up and puts a hand on my shoulder. "I guess I can call a cab," I say, offering him back the helmet.

He shakes his head. Somewhere else in the garage, a car starts up and pulls up to the exit and out into the street. I turn my head to look towards it, and Wufei says, "Nonsense, it's not too far to my apartment anyway."

"It's far to mine."

"When you're ready to go home, we'll take my car," he says, removing his hand from my shoulder and turning back to the motorcycle to collect his own helmet. He throws one leg over and turns the key, looking at me expectantly through the slightly tinted shield of the helmet.

I put the helmet on and strap it under my chin properly. He lowers the bike from it's kickstand and turns it around, backing up so that he's next to me again. I zip my jacket up to my chin and turn the collar up before sitting down on the back of the seat of his motorcycle. It's odd, trying to get situated, but he doesn't go forward at all until I'm balanced and have my hands on his waist.

"You're probably going to want to hold on tighter than that," his muffled voice says from under the helmet. "We'll be able to keep each other warm better if you do."

Logic. Always the blasted logic.

Something it's useless to argue with.

I loop my arms tighter around him and lean up against his back, putting the side of my head against the dip between his shoulder blades. He revs the motorcycle once, and pulls forward experimentally.

Once he's sure that I won't fall off, he pulls up the slight incline and turns out onto the street. Traffic isn't bad, but it isn't good either. There are cars sitting basically stationary in the street, moving, at most, five to ten miles an hour. The joy of a motorcycle is that rush hour traffic doesn't really affect you. Carefully, with a skill that seems reminiscent of piloting a mobile suit, Wufei weaves us in and out of the line of traffic.  


We don't stop until we hit a red light. Around us, the car engines fill the air with exhaust and the engines make a pleasant rumble in the air. The buildings tower around us, like the arms of some fallen giant reaching up to draw circles in the overcast sky. I don't really feel like I'm outdoors. It's too enveloping. I'm used to outdoors feeling free and open, not closed off and suffocating.  


Through the myriad of scents, mystically it seems, I pick up the smell of his jacket, so close to my face through the helmet. My arms are latched one over the other around his abdomen, and I feel the tension in his muscles as he maintains a strict posture, both to hold the bike on course and to help me stay on.  


I find I'm no longer cold.

*

_-1- "cube farm" - an office full of cubicles. In this instance, a floor full._

_-2- "prairie dogging" - When someone yells or drops something loudly in a cube farm and everyone's heads pop up over the walls to see what's going on._

Both this chapter's terms come from a funny forward about office terminology I got a few years ago and kept for some reason.  



	6. Hard Truth

"Here, wrap this around you," he says, voice gentle as he hands me the warm woolen blanket. In his other hand is balanced a small tray with tea settings on it.

"I'm fine, really," I protest, but take the blanket anyway. I was amazed that of all the places he could've taken me, he brought me here. He mentioned it, before I got onto his motorcycle, but I don't think I really took him serious.

Even though I know where his apartment is, I'd never been inside his building until today. He pulled into the garage and parked the motorcycle right next to his car. He tucked both our helmets onto the cycle on separate points and then took my hand to get my attention.

He kept holding it until we reached the elevator. It was much lower tech than the one at work, the lighting was not nearly as white, the walls were all closed in. I can understand how people used to feel claustrophobic in them, when I ride in that elevator. He pressed the button for the fourteenth floor.

His high rise, however, has a much more impressive view than mine does. And the elevator is faster than mine or the one at work, too. We didn't say much of anything until he just handed me the blanket, and as soon as he saw that our coats and shoes were stowed away properly, he disappeared into the back of the apartment.

I wasn't quite bold enough to follow him, and so I stayed in the living room, looking over the design of it. On the wall opposite the large window his sword hangs, over a painting of bamboo and mountains. I recognize the work, but can't quite recall the author's name at the moment. Very stylized. There are folding screens in front of the doorways that have no doors, but the wood is cherry, and the screens aren't made of rice paper. I chide myself, to think that I expected him to be rigidly and formally traditional.

There is a long, low table, with pillows the right size to sit on set around it on the thin mat that covers the hardwood floor. My socks, in contrast to the immaculate cleanliness of the floor, looked almost ridiculous to me as I wandered around slowly. I was looking at the one photograph in the room when he came in with the tea and blanket.

He moves over to the table and sets the tray down. "I made tea," he announces, almost proudly, and motions for me to take a seat across from him on one of the other cushions. Happily, I notice he also has a comfortable looking couch across the room, as though there's a somehow missing television hiding in the closed hutch desk across the room, or on a cart he wheels out on special occasions.

I drape the blanket around me, so it covers my mostly bare legs and take a seat, my mind drawn back to the photograph. The young woman in the picture seemed hardly old enough to be in the outfit she was wearing, which, I'm pretty sure, was a traditional wedding costume from one or another of the areas up the Yang Tse. A… Qi Pao -1-, I believe it is called. Her headdress is ornate, and the veil covering her face is too thick to see anything but her wide, bright eyes.

Her face is stern, there is no smile like a normal bride might wear, instead, she appears almost angry. Her mannerisms, very traditional in static, I can only guess, would be unorthodox in motion.

"You seem distracted," he says, setting a teacup before me, and then pouring his own. "What is it?"

I point.

He pauses in his pouring to follow my hand with his eyes, and then looks back at the occupation his hands are involved in. "Meiran."

The tone of his voice tells me that it's better that I not press the matter. For the time being I guess that's okay, he didn't press me about my blunder of blurting out how I don't normally get along so well with Chinese men, so I'll leave this 'Meiran' topic alone.

I wait for him to finish pouring his tea and then lift my own cup and carefully take a sip. For a long time I wasn't much of a tea drinker, and then I went to visit my brother Lin. He and I have always gotten along rather well, probably because the two of us were generally ignored by our father, Lin because, as the oldest son, it was his duty to be as attentive and respectful as he was; I because as a daughter I was expected to be seen and not heard. He was always very big on tea, and taught me to appreciate it. Lin is older than I am, and he always made sure to take the time to do things like that.

He lifts his cup and takes a drink without looking at me at all.

I set my teacup down and look him in the eye, "Fei… I'm sorry."

He looks up at me. "What do you mean?"

"I should probably go," I say, and make a move to stand. It was wrong of me to come, I realize. I shouldn't be here. Being alone is better than being in a room with someone who won't look at you.

He stands as well, "Why?"

I move towards the door.

"Is it about her?" his voice is sharp, and it stops me as I lay a hand on my jacket. "You can't possibly know what happened with…"

"No," I reply, "I have no idea who she is, or what happened between the two of you." I let my hand fall from the coat and turn my head to look over my shoulder at him, "But I'm not as stupid about Chinese culture as you might think, Wufei." He winces. "And it suddenly begins to make sense, why you were able to be a Gundam pilot and risk your life all the time. That L5 colony… it was yours, wasn't it? Your colony blew up and your clan died, didn't they?" I'm stating the obvious, but it needs to be said.

"That is not why I became a Gundam pilot."

"Then it must've been her," I say, turning from him. The look on his face makes it hard to look him in the eye. He seems hurt by all that I've said, which means it must be true. I slip my jacket on and bend down to get my feet into my boots.

"Each of us had a different reason for piloting a Gundam, Sally," he says from close behind me. I didn't hear him cross the room.

"Then I'm sure your reason for being a Preventer must be just as good," I stand up, and flip my hair over my shoulders, zipping my coat up, "but I don't need this right now."

There is a low rumble from him, and in a moment I find myself roughly turned around, back pressed against the wall. His hands, strong and angry, are clamped on my upper arms and he is glaring angrily at me. "Your father is dying," he says.

I don't respond to that statement, I can't. It's not true. It… "Let me go."

"Your father is dying, Sally," he repeats it.

"Let me go, Chang." I stare angrily back into his eyes, feeling a burning coming from my chest. "I'm going to go home and go to bed."

"Your father _is_ dying," he says once again.

I feel something inside start to crack as I look into his eyes, which seem to me to be very intently burning into mine. I open my mouth to speak, to lead my hands to shove him off of me, to do anything to get rid of the anger that is welling up inside me, but he does the most unexpected thing I can think of.

He leans in and presses his lips to mine.

For a moment, I struggle, unable to comprehend what is happening. It's been a long time since I bothered to date a man that would kiss me, at all. All the dates my father set me up with were more interested in sizing me up for a wedding ring than any sort of personal relationship with me.

But after a short moment of struggle, I give in, and kiss back. He leans into me for a moment, and then he lets go of my arms, planting them on the wall beside me, and pushes away. I open my eyes, and stare at him confusedly.

"It's not the end of the world," he says gently, as though he didn't just interrupt the conversation by kissing me. "Right?"

I move so quickly that I'm not sure whether or not he even sees me narrow my eyes before I knee him in the groin and shove him away from me. He doubles over, but makes no noise, and I yank the door open and find my way out.

*

The cab ride is long, and cold, and lonely, coming back to my apartment. The sky outside is still overcast, and looks to be threatening snow. But somehow, I don't really mind. I'm still too… well I'm not angry that Wufei kissed me, I just wish he'd do it under different circumstances. When I used to spend more time talking to Duo, he mentioned once when Heero said something about 'life affirming experiences' and how much he hated them.

I think I finally understand what he meant. At the time I thought, vaguely, that Heero used to hit him in order to wake him up, when he was feeling depressed or suicidal. The two of us were able to talk about that sort of thing, eventually.

When I first met Duo, he didn't like me. He thought that I was just another bad Alliance officer, and that I was trouble. He later remarked that he was almost completely wrong about me, withstanding the bit about me being trouble, but that was ok, and he didn't mind.

It ended up being a short-lived running gag aboard Peacemillion, one that only the two of us really cared about or really laughed at. Trowa always seemed disdainful of our jokes, Heero and Wufei did their best to ignore us for the most part, and Quatre was very distracted at the time. Not that anyone had much to say to him about being so distracted, given the circumstances.

Looking back on it now, I guess everyone had their own way of dealing with the hardships of war. Duo and I… I guess we just looked for the person most similar to us, and clung to each other. There's a faint smile on my face as I step out of the taxi in front of my building. I reach into my coat pocket to fish out my keys after paying the cab driver and feel a piece of paper.

I pull it out.

My grocery list.

With a sigh, I make a turn and head down the street. I could get into another cab, but that'd be stupid, considering how close my car is and how close the grocery store is, so I decide to walk the three blocks to the store. I won't have too much to bring back.

*

When you're out of sorts, the entire world is oppressive. Here I am, standing in the grocery store, trying to pick out a bunch of carrots, and I feel utterly sick to my stomach. The people around me are going about their own shopping, but I feel like I'm frozen, apart from them.

I pick out some carrots and move on to bread. I glance at my watch. Two-fifteen p.m. Waiting to go home to an empty apartment, as usual. I wonder what exactly Wufei was after when he kissed me, idly, as I put a loaf of bread into my hand basket.

Maybe I should get a cat.

But if I have to go and be with my father after this mission…

I'm always on missions, getting a cat would just mean I'd have to put it up somewhere while I was gone. That would be cruel to the cat, and I don't think I could use an animal to make up for not having a social life. Maybe I should just get some friends instead. It wouldn't be too hard, I guess.

I head towards the check out.

Now that Hilde's working at headquarters, there's got to be something the two of us can talk about. Or there's Julia. I work with a million people, it seems, that I never speak to. I could pick someone out and become friends with them.

"Fourteen twenty-four, Ma'am."

I blink and look at the cashier. I don't look that old, do I? I glance down at myself, and remember that I'm still in uniform, and figure that that's got to be the reason for it. I never get called anything but miss when I'm in street clothes. I guess the uniform adds both respectability and ten years. Same with the old military uniform I used to wear. After I quit the Alliance, I looked younger.

Even to myself.

But I also realized how young the Alliance had been accepting soldiers. I hand the cashier fifteen and get my change back, scooping up my bag and heading out of the store, into the street.

I feel the chill first, and the dampness second. Apparently, it's too warm for snow, so it decided to rain instead. I roll my eyes and turn my collar up. No help for it now, I'm not going to take a cab three blocks.

It's an odd hour of the afternoon, so the sidewalk is basically empty except for me and a few people rushing to cover. The rain is steady, but not torrential. It feels good on my cheeks, cool, like the wind, and I tighten my grip on the bag in my arms as I wait at a crosswalk.

Two blocks left, and the traffic seems to be going a little faster. I'll get my prescription filled tomorrow, so that I have it with me when I head out on my mission. At the other side of the crosswalk and down the block a ways, I see a familiar head of wild hair sticking, almost defiantly, out of a long trench coat.

I freeze in my tracks, the rainwater in my hair trickling down the back of my neck and into my clothes. A car horn honks, and I hurry across the street. I knew he was in the city, I just had no idea I'd run into him.

"Heero?" I say in a low voice as I reach the other side. He's much closer now.

He keeps walking, obviously not having heard me.

He's grown, taller, but not by much. He's still only about five and a half feet tall, but the fall of the jacket tells me that he hasn't changed in build, at the very least. I didn't really expect him to get much taller, but I thought he'd at least get as tall as Wufei. I was obviously wrong.

"Heero," I say as he gets close enough to hear my quiet voice. I was wrong. He's my height. He stops walking and turns his eyes towards me.

Still the same clear, shocking blue that they always were. Quatre's eyes were always innocent, even in his despair, but there was always something about Heero that said, in a clear voice, 'I'm dangerous, and I know about the world.' They used to say that they didn't care what happened, as well… but while we were on Peacemillion, something in his eyes changed.

Noin never really noticed it, though I'm sure Duo did. Except for Duo, the other pilots were too introverted at the time to notice one another's behavior. I wonder why I'm thinking about Duo so much today. Heero was able to see, in his comrades, at least what needed to happen for them to work well with one another. It's why he gave Quatre the Zero System for Sandrock Custom, and, again, why he punched Duo in the stomach and left him behind on X-18999. He's never been one to talk much when actions could suffice.

But now, there's something in them that lets me know he's lived in the last seven years. He's not as isolated as he used to make himself. He still refuses to have anything to do with Relena, from what I hear, but he's not been totally alone, I see. I can make out scars someone's left him with, the kind on the heart, not the body, in his eyes as he looks at me.

"Hello Sally," he says, stopping and turning to look me over. His eyes, still, are calculating, scrutinizing. "What happened to you today?"

The words that come tumbling from my mouth amaze me, again, "I don't think you really want to know."

"Perhaps I do," he counters, "Why else would I have asked?"

"It's raining outside. There's got to be a better place for this conversation."

He nods, and starts walking again. He gets a few feet behind me and then turns back to say, "Aren't you coming?"

I turn and jog the few steps to catch up with him. At this point, I don't care where he's taking me. I'm just going to trust him and follow. I learned to trust Heero seven years ago, during the Eve Wars. If not because he was right, then because he at least always knew what to do, and where to go. You can trust Heero to be right on time.

*

Wufei _was_ lying when he said he had seen Heero and was in the neighborhood. By the time we get back to Heero's apartment, we're both soaked through our coats. My leg feels like what I can only imagine a badly cooked side of rib must feel like. Or would feel like, if it were still alive. Heero's coat is sopping wet as well, and if I didn't know better, I'd think the abominable and unbeatable ex-pilot is actually cold.

As soon as we step in the door, he deposits the sopping coat and his shoes by the door. "Hang up your coat, I'll find something dry for you to put on."

I can't imagine what he has that would be the right size for me to wear… there's a little difference between our builds, even though we're just about the same height. Women have these things called breasts that are used to feed babies and attract potential mates that he doesn't have. Unless of course he's got some weird fetishes that I don't know about.

They do say it's always the quiet ones.

I take my boots off, for the second time today. This time, though, it feels a little more utilitarian. My boots are so wet that they squish and ooze when I take a step. Heero's apartment is a far cry from what I expected, having been to Wufei's. The rooms are the standard white color, but there are hangings and posters and blown up photographs all over it, so that it doesn't look sparse, the way Wufei's apartment does. There's a large bookshelf that has smaller picture frames on it, and I wander over to look at them while I wait for Heero to come back.

I'm barely across the room when Heero steps in from a doorway right next to it and offers me a small pile of folded material. "The bathroom is on the left there," he motions me back. I nod, and step past him. He picks up a frame and moves past the bookcase with it. Obviously something he didn't want me to see. His timing was too good for that.

In the bathroom, with the door closed, I look over what he handed me, and blink.

I've never worn a kimono before.

I hear voices out in the other room, but I ignore them, trying to figure out how to put the stupid kimono on. It takes a couple minutes, but I finally figure out how to wrap the thing with some semblance of decency around me, and then I take my hair down and wrap the towel that was on the bottom of the pile around my head.

I make it out to the front room, and find Heero standing and staring out the window on the eastern side of the apartment. Not that there's any morning sunlight at… I check my watch, four-fifteen in the evening, but my imagination can make the jump.

"Whose picture did you take down?" I ask, rubbing my hair with the towel.

He's still holding the frame.

"Duo's."

I blink. "Why?"

"Long story. So, are you ready to tell me what happened to you today?"

I blink again. Leave it to Heero… "If you're sure you want to know," I say, leaving off any other preamble before launching into my story.

Somewhere in the middle of it we move to the couch. He's not looking directly at me, but I can tell he's listening intently. I stumble a little when I get to what Wufei did at his apartment, and then I, almost stupidly, find myself adding on what Duo said about 'life affirming experiences'.

"I'm surprised he remembered that."

"It was a while ago, I don't know if he still does."

"If he remembered it then, I'm sure he remembers it now."

The frame with Duo's picture in it is hidden away on the windowsill, but I can feel Heero's fingers twitch. "Why do you say that?"

"His memory is better than mine, when he decides to remember something." He adds, in a softer voice that is reminiscent of his eyes, to me at least, "And he's always chosen to remember me."

Something seems to click in my mind and I wonder what sort of a relationship Duo and Heero had. I've never been slow to pick up on other people's relationships, even though I can't seem to manage one on my own, but I was never sure about the two of them. Trowa and Quatre were fairly obvious. They've gone their separate ways now, and from the rumors I read in the gossip column of the paper this morning before work… even though it seems like a million years ago now… Quatre's going to be married and start having his own children soon.

'Winner family tradition' and all that. It's not entirely someone else's idea, though. Quatre's wanted to have a family of his own since his father died, from what I can tell. His mother died giving birth to him, so he missed out on a lot of the two-parent family that I had.

I wonder how Trowa feels about it.

I glance at my watch again. It's nearly seven-thirty.

I lean back on the couch and stare up at the ceiling. My leg feels a little tingly, I'll have to be sure to keep it open to the air tonight, since I don't plan on wearing skirts and robes during my trip to L2. "It's getting late," I comment.

"It is," he responds.

"I should get home. I've got to go to work in the morning."

"So do I," he responds, getting to his feet. "Let me go and get your clothes, they should be dry by now.

Alone in the living room again, I stand up and wander over to the bookcase. The other photographs are ones I've seen before, in newspapers. A few of them are just that, newspaper clippings. They all involve the other pilots, but nothing of himself, except for one group picture with the other ex-pilots.

It is of the five of them wearing their Preventers uniforms. They might not have stayed, but in order to appease the media, we had to make them look like they were part of the Preventers during the Mariemaia Incident.

Wufei was a special case.

He's in the picture too, with his back to the other four, looking rather like he did in real life at the time. Angry and confused. Heero's got a serious expression on his face, and his hand on Duo's shoulder, while Duo is grinning like the madman that he claims to be. Quatre looks worried, and Trowa's not even looking at the camera. It's a great profile of his hair though.

Heero's hand falls on my shoulder. I start a little, not remembering him ever having been so quiet. Duo was always the quieter mover of the two of them, less flashy, unless someone was watching him. Heero hands me my clothes and motions me back towards the bathroom, buttoning up his shirt as he does so. "I'll give you a ride to your building, but you'll have to give me directions."

I go back and change, finding it much easier to get out of the get up than it was to get in. I take pains to fold it along the same lines it was folded before, so as to show Heero the respect in returning what I was leant the way it was given to me. It's important, something I grew up with. Debts need to be paid back the proper way.

Coming back out, I set the folded material and towel on the couch. Heero hands me my jacket and pulls on his trench coat. The fabric looks mostly dry, but from the slight change in expression on his face, I can tell the black coat isn't nearly dry enough for his tastes. We head out, and he locks the door. The elevator here is fast, and the light is white. It smells sterile, a little devoid of scent, and it's a little cold. I pull my jacket closer to me and zip it up.

I can smell _him_ on me. Despite the rain, and the distance, my damn jacket smells like tiger's balm and… and something else.

I glance over at Heero, and find that he is as lost in thought as I am. "What are you thinking about?"

He doesn't answer, and the elevator stops on the garage level. I follow him out, and to a sleek black car. Whatever it is Heero's doing for a living now, he's well off. He hits a button on his keychain and the doors unlock. He opens the door and starts the car, waiting for me to get in as well.

I open the door and slide in carefully on the black leather seat.

"What does it matter?" he asks, pulling out of his parking spot with a practiced ease that makes me wonder how long he's been living in this apartment building.

"I wouldn't have asked if I didn't want to know, Heero."

"No one calls me that anymore," he says, turning out onto the street. "Which way?"

"Left here, I live on one hundred and third street."

"Nice neighborhood, Preventers can afford that area?"

"You're one to talk," I shoot back. I fold my arms on my chest and look out the window. He continues driving until we get to the next street. "Right. Two blocks."

"Duo," he says without preamble.

It takes me a moment to realize that he's answering my question, and the air in the car seems to be much heavier than it was before he said that. There's no mistaking it, not now, something was… or is, for that matter, between Duo and Heero. Something more than both being pilots during the wars, or even good friends. Heero has the same tone in his voice, that dangerous and possessive tone, the same one that Trowa used when he made the joking admission to being involved with Jean. That doesn't just come from being plutonic with one another.

The car ride passes in silence, broken only by my directions from time to time. He pulls into the visitor parking in my building and says, "Now that you know where I live, don't be a stranger."

I nod, a little dumbfounded. He may have lived a little in the past seven years, but he's still as silent and unapproachable as ever. I get out of the car and he rolls down the window to say something else. "If you ever need my help, feel free to give me a call."

I blink, "Heero, I don't have your…"

He hands over a card with a number on it. "I know. Ja, Sally."

He pulls out at a patient pace, but I can tell his car gets good usage, the purring engine under the hood almost begs to be driven fast, and the wear and tear on the tires suggests that he's a bit of a lead foot.

*

_-1- Qi Pao is a northern Chinese wedding dress, usually bearing the embroidered design of a dragon and a phoenix. The cloth is usually red (satin, I believe), and the embroidery gold. Those colors have to do with the prosperity and success of the marriage. _

I used a lot of sources to gather the information on traditional Chinese weddings. If you want them, email me.


	7. Gunshot

I find myself pinned down. On one side there is gunfire, and on the other, Allan's innocent face. Heero was right on the money when he warned me that Jarod Kierns was a man who would know how much he had gleamed out of the Exian database and would act accordingly. Allan, for his part, knew next to nothing of his company's indiscretions on peace.

It's why I bothered to yank him down behind the hutch built into the wall with me when the shooting started. Even though it cost me the use of my right arm. A bullet through the shoulder, one that I'm doing my best not to focus on.

"This is crazy, you know that, don't you?" Allan says in a shrill whisper. "You don't have a gun, and there are so many more of them -"

I reach over, putting weight on my pained arm, and slap him across the face. Indignantly, he glares as the red imprint of my hand starts to grow on his face. "Shut up and let me think," I say in a cold voice. They don't know I'm unarmed, unless they just heard him say so. I glance up at the clock. Trowa and Wufei should be in looking for me soon. If I can only hold out until then…

No, holding out is secondary. My first objective has to be escape, or I won't survive. I glance around the area and notice the recessed doorway leading somewhere. It's ajar.

"Investigator, there's no use hiding. If you come out now, with your hands up, we won't harm you. We only want to ask you a few questions."

Yeah right. If I can get through that door…

I look over to Allan, distracted, I only meet his glance as he makes his decision. A fatal one. I make a move to grab him, but it seems like I am moving in slow motion, and he at double speed. My injury must be slowing me down. Or maybe I was never as quick as I thought I was.

Time seems to freeze for a moment. Allan meets my eyes and smiles faintly. His smile is very reminiscent of Wufei, for an instant. I feel a twinge of regret, and berate myself for thinking of Wufei at a time when I should be worried about survival. There is what seems to be an eternal moment of silence, which is finally broken into a million shards by the report of a gun.

My first thoughts are that I never meant for this to happen. Not any of it. I wasn't supposed to find something that would get anyone killed, not at all.

*

I wake up, and look out the window. _He's gone, today_, I think to myself. Hopped a shuttle this morning for L1 and I won't see him for the better part of a month, if my own mission goes well. If my mission goes badly, however… I'd rather not think about that right now, so I don't think I will.

So I'm going to do something to distract myself. I'm going to go exercise. I sit up in bed and notice that I've beaten my alarm clock up. It's not quite six a.m. I throw back the sheets in a frustrated gesture and stalk to my closet, pulling on some clothes. I stop by the full-length mirror before pulling on my sweat pants. I don't recall ever enjoying mirrors. When I look into them, I see my mother's reflection instead of my own, sometimes. We have the same eyes, my father and brothers always remarked when I was younger. It wasn't true, of course, her eyes were much like Zechs', and mine are slightly dirtier than hers, bearing slight flecks of brown in the irises, but it is nice of them to say that.

Other than my eyes, I can't say anything bad about my reflection. Working for the Preventers really keeps you in shape. At twenty eight, I can finally say that I've got the muscular body of a soldier… and the curves of a super model. I don't mind mirrors, if I'm not looking at my face.

Sometimes I think that what my father and brothers really meant was that we have the same expressions, or perhaps, the same expressiveness to our eyes. I do believe my mother exemplified the idea behind a 'cold gaze'. Whenever we did something wrong, as children my brothers and I were more afraid of her finding out and giving us a look than of our father's punishment. And that, if nothing else, I've inherited from her.

Staring, transfixed, into the mirror, I mull over the previous evening. I'm not sure quite how I feel about Wufei, but I feel better, somehow, after my short visit with Heero. He's a good listener, as good of a listener as anyone could ever hope for. And, for the most part, most likely because of his own sins and transgressions, he doesn't judge. I must say he's a better confessor than anyone else I've ever known. Than any priest, anyway.

Thinking of priests makes me think of Duo, and of the puzzling situation between the two of them. I can't think of anything that would make Heero so reluctant to talk about his former… whatever…

I pull on my sweatpants and head out of my apartment, locking the door behind me. I'm not going to work today, I've decided, I'll go in tomorrow, since I leave the day after. Instead, I'm going to go for a long jog. I check to make sure I've got everything, including my cell phone, and clip my keys onto a lariat, which I tuck into my sweatshirt.

The jog is uneventful. I make it all the way to Headquarters, nearly a mile away, and lean over, panting for breath. I didn't realize I was going to jog so far, in the cold, and I stare up at the building. For twentieth century modern architecture, it's not half bad.

It's a style that has endured. I head up the front steps, remembering my laptop, which was left behind in my hasty retreat yesterday. A battered old Preventers baseball cap on my head, I pull it low to hide my eyes. The doors of the elevator open on the proper floor, and I step out, shoving my hands into the pockets of my zip up sweatshirt, eyes low.

I make it to my office, and am opening the door when the first voice catches up with me. "Hey, you! How'd you get in here?"

I turn and give the speaker, Julia, a flat look. She blinks, taken aback.

"Sally?"

I nod, wordlessly, and push my door open, heading inside and hoping, fervently, that she doesn't follow me.

No such luck.

"Why aren't you in to work today?" Julia asks, leaning against the doorway and running her fingers through her platinum bangs. No, Julia, reminding me that I'm not as blond as you are isn't going to ingratiate you to me at the moment, or make me any more inclined to speak.

"I'm leaving day after tomorrow on a mission." I grab my briefcase, with my laptop, "I'm not required to be in until I get back."

"Oh, is that because of the accident you had in the elevator yesterday? We heard all about it… I wouldn't have been so forgiving, if it were me."

I pause, half bent over to take something out of my bottom drawer. "Forgiving?"

"If Chang spilled coffee all over me and gave me third degree burns, I think I'd have clobbered him." She sees the tight set of my lips and adds quickly, "Even if he did help me to the nurse's office afterwards."

"Where…" I struggle to keep my voice controlled, "Where did you hear that?"

"Everyone's talking about it."

"_Every_one?" I ask, feeling an old familiar twitch start in my eye.

"Yeah, Jake down on the second floor told us all about it."

"Right," I mutter, slamming my drawer.

Julia jumps as I straighten up, the noise and the look on my face making her almost take a step back. "Let's set one thing straight, shall we?"

She swallows, but nods.

"Wufei had nothing to do with the coffee that got spilled on me. It was my own fault. I happen to be having a particularly bad week, and picking on my friends isn't helping any, as for being mad at anyone," I shove the papers into my briefcase and take a step forward, closing the distance between the two of us. "The only person I'm mad at _right now_ is all of you gossip mongers."

I put one hand on her collar bone and shoved her out of my doorway, a little forcibly. She stumbled and ran into the wall across from my office, giving me a deer in the headlights look. Julia can be all right sometimes, but she has never been able to trust Wufei, after what happened during the Mariemaia Incident. I'm not sure why I can, personally, but I can, and I'm sick and tired of hearing people run around behind his back and badmouth him. I slam my office door behind me and lock it, turning and leaving the floor without further comment.

Julia collects herself enough to call after me, "Good luck on your mission," as the elevator doors close. I glare at them, and her through them, as long as I can bear to be that angry at her.

Originally, Wufei and I were partnered together because he was a rookie, and, in a sense, I was a senior operative. Lady Une sent me to be the one to extend the invitation to join the Preventers to him, for good reason. He was very difficult to work with, back then. He wouldn't speak much outside of simple, formal declarations. 'Yes' and 'no' with the occasionally long sentence of, 'that's illogical'. He used to snap things in Chinese that ended with the word 'onna' - woman. I was never quite sure whether he meant them as being directed towards me, he used to be very fond of using that impersonal way of addressing me, or in general.

Looking back on it now I have to wonder if he wasn't 'speaking' with Meiran.

The other operatives were scared of him, and mistrustful. The later, obviously, hasn't still been quelled in everyone's hearts. Julia's not the problem, she's just the semi-innocent victim of gossipmongers. But that she became such a victim is a problem. He was partnered with me for a year and a half, an epoch of annoying non-communication, before I finally snapped.

**

"Yes," Wufei said, sitting down to fill out his paperwork at the desk across from mine. It was the third word he had said that morning, and the first had been a gruff 'hello', while the second was a 'no' when I offered him coffee.

I slammed my folder, under the weight of my hand, down on my desk. The impact very nearly sent my steaming coffee toppling right over into my lap, but it steadied itself, only releasing more curling wisps of fragrant steam and a few drops onto the finished wooden tabletop. Startled, he nearly jumped in his seat, and looked up at me.

"All right Chang," I was still calling him that at the time, a personal-revenge against his single word speech. "I don't know what your problem is, but since you don't answer, I'm going to make this simple. Start talking, or I'm asking to be reassigned."

He looked up at me, brown eyes wide and uncomprehending.

"Don't even give me that. Whatever test you want me to pass, I think by now I've passed it. There's no need to continue with this farce. I know you can speak, I've heard you. Open your mouth and use it for what it was meant for, Wufei."

When he still didn't speak, I shoved my chair backwards and stalked out of the office. I was waiting outside of Une's office when he caught up with me.

"You're very demanding," he muttered at me.

"You're infuriating, I hope your new partner is as patient as I am."

Une watched from inside her office at the exchange, I now know. She didn't open the door because she wanted us to sort it out. Again, actions that suspect she saw the two of us in some sort of deeper relationship than we ourselves ever did, before.

"I'll resign first," he responded, folding his arms on his chest.

"Resign," I taunted, crossing my long legs. He remained undaunted, and we stared at one another for a long moment. He was the one to crack first, a slight twitch of his eyebrow, and I knew I wasn't going to ask to be reassigned anymore than he was going to resign.

"It's going to take time," he said, lowering his arms, and in so doing, his defenses.

"I'm willing to help… and to wait." He nodded grudgingly, looking very uncomfortable in his uniform. He had recently hit a growth spurt, the one that took him from eye level to a few inches taller than me, and he had yet to receive his new uniform, so his clothing was too small for him. "But I won't take this silent treatment from you."

He nodded again, "And the rest of the force, either, I gather."

"What do you mean?"

He gestured around with a trained hand, an economic flick of his wrist, and I noticed for the first time that he and I were alone in the small area outside the office. "I know what they say about me. I'm not deaf."

"Just mute," I muttered, accepting the hand he offered me to help me out of the chair. He smirked a little at the joke, the first crack of his sense of humor I had then to see.

"Chang the Terrible strikes again," he muttered, disdainfully. I knew it was not a nickname he enjoyed. "Dragon's venom in my veins."

We turned, together, to head back to the elevator, and our floor, where our office was abandoned, and open. I paused, as he was about to step into the elevator, and stopped him with a hand on his arm. "Not everyone thinks that, you know."

"Who doesn't?" his tone was gruff, bitter, jaded. "I even drive my partner to extremes."

I ran a hand over my hair, trying to tuck the escaping strands back into the braid on the side of my head, but they came right back down, tumbling into my eyes. "Not because of that though," I responded, stepping past him into the elevator.

"Why then?" he jumped on the question, tactlessly and bluntly.

"Because I'm tired of seeing you pretending to be Pandora's box, Wufei." I said, knowing, and forgiving, of his lack of contact socially. First a gundam pilot, second a human being, Duo commented about Wufei once. "Opening up won't destroy the world."

He blinked, and then a calm expression, a warmly calm expression, spread across his features. It was the first hint of a smile I had ever seen on his face, and I liked the look of it.

**

Even after the outburst, I think as I head back down the front steps with my briefcase, and laptop, securely in hand, it hadn't been smooth sailing. He still hasn't lived down the overbearing and scary reputation, and Trowa doesn't help matters much. The two of them seem to share some sort of telepathy that no one else can intrude on, when they work together. Undoubtedly born of working together… but it may also come from some sort of a shared experience. I hail a cab and head home, suddenly feeling weary, possibly from the medication and the exertion, and maybe just from thinking too hard.


	8. Phone Tag

The splatter of blood on the clean taupe paint of the wall behind the opening to the main room is perfect for an instant, until Allan's body slams into the wall, the inertia of the bullet transferring easily, as physics dictates, and giving enough force to throw him backwards, the back of his head making a wet thud as it impacts with the wall.

They're packing heavy.

So much for Julia's wish of good luck.

Bonelessly, his body crumples to the floor, a single bullet hole right between his glazed, staring eyes. The smell of fresh blood, like newly smelted copper, is heavy in the air of the small alcove. His body is slumped at such an unnatural angle that if I inch my hand forward half a foot or so, I could touch the side of his left foot.

In the breathless quiet, I hear the resounding sound of a slap. "Guns on the floor! Trigger happy rookies outside!" There is a pause, and the shuffle of feet. "Investigator, it's just you and me now."

***

The rest of the day was pretty much a bust. I was too angry to do much more than pace my apartment and set up the paperwork. I really wish the time hadn't been so staggered between when Wufei and I left for our missions, because at least then I wouldn't have to worry about the time difference. I wouldn't have had to go back for my briefcase, and I certainly wouldn't have had to deal with Julia.

I frown and glance at the clock. I toss my baseball cap aside and flop down on the couch, toeing off my shoes before flipping on the television.

The phone rings.

I pick it up, nearly diving off the couch, and almost hurting myself.

"Y-hello?"

There is a little static on the line, as though it's coming from a long distance.

"Sally?"

"Hi, Wufei," I reply, a little puzzled. "What's up?"

From the hesitant pause, I can almost picture him scuffing his foot and looking bashful… ok, so if he did that sort of an action, he would be. "I wanted to apologize… for yesterday. My actions were… inexcusable."

I blink. "Your-"

His voice, when he speaks, is annoyed. "When I kissed you," and harsh. "You've forgotten already?"

I shake my head a moment, until I realize that he can't see that. "No," I say quickly, "It would be… very hard to forget that."

He harrumphs, and I hear Trowa say something in the background, a mere impression of his voice, and Wufei says quickly, "I have to go. Take care on your mission," and, without waiting for me to respond, hangs up.

I stare in confusion at the phone for a while, listening to the dial tone, and then I hang up. The television, in the background, makes noise that I try my best to tune into, but I cannot. After this morning, I'm fed up. I glance at the clock again, yawning. I give up, and climb to my feet, slinking off to my bedroom.

In the morning, at least I can occupy myself. Packing, last minute things. I go to bed, barely taking the time to strip off my sweats, under the illusion that the next day will be better.

*

I couldn't have been more wrong.

The first thing that happened, after letting myself sleep in, was that the buzzer rang. Repeatedly.

I am about to shrug it off and go back to sleep, when the phone rings. Bleary eyed with sleep, I fumble for it. "Hello?" I half expect it to be Wufei again.

"Sorry to bother you so early, Sally," but it isn't. "I know you're leaving on assignment tomorrow, and that you took the day off, but…"

"Hilde?" my voice, even in my own ears, sounds incredulous.

"Yeah," she responds, and I can tell something is on her mind, something is bothering her that she won't say on the phone.

"Hold on, I'll buzz you up," I say, hanging up the phone and forcing myself out of bed. My leg is stiff, and so I hobble over to the wall panel and buzz for her to be let in. I glance at my leg in the mirror, and see that it's a little dry, so I put some of the medication on it, and pull on a robe so that I look a little more decent when Hilde gets up.

There's a knock on the door, and I go to open it.

Hilde Schbeiker is one of the last people I ever expected to show up at nine a.m. with a guilty expression on her face, but here she is. I step aside, wordlessly, and she comes into the apartment. I close the door and motion for her to head over to the couch. She smells of peach lotion, or maybe shampoo, faintly, and takes a seat on the couch, in the slanting morning sunshine.

"I-"

I cut her off, "Tea or coffee?"

"What?" her voice is surprised. Perhaps I am more Chinese than I thought… or at least not as American.

"I'm not awake, and you're upset. Calm down first, and then we'll talk. Coffee wakes me up, and tea will calm you down." She sits back against the couch, uncomfortable on it's softness. It's almost as though she is afraid to feel comfortable here. I busy myself in the kitchen, and come back out with two mugs, and wordlessly hand her the coffee before sitting myself down in the chair across the coffee table from her.

"You can speak now."

She nods, and stares into the tea, looking for courage. "I hate to bother you, like I said…"

"You obviously needed someone to talk to. You left work, I take it?" She's wearing the regular office uniform from the floor she works on. She nods, and takes a sip of her tea. "Well, then it's no trouble. What's on your mind?"

"Duo," she says, looking out the window.

And I wonder how it is that I am so entangled in the life of a man I haven't seen in years. "Duo? What about him?"

"Well… I saw Heero today. I thought it would be all right, but he… he didn't seem to recognize me, when he saw me."

"What's that got to do with Duo?" I ask, puzzled. I've never heard much of the story of this interesting little triangle, personally. Normally, I wouldn't push, but she obviously need someone to talk about it with.

"They… the two of them…" she seems to be struggling to wrap her mind around the right words to say to me.

"Were sleeping together?"

She looks up, as though I wasn't supposed to know that, and nods, "Yes, but… it was more than just that…"

"So what would Heero have had reason to recognize you for?" as I ask this, I am immediately sorry. She cringes. "You must admit, if he and Duo were involved, he might have felt threatened by you." I think back to the picture in Wufei's apartment… Meiran. Even though the two of us weren't involved, aren't, I correct myself, the idea that he had been married or … betrothed, I think he called it, unsettles me, and makes me jealous and possessive… against a dead woman.

"You're right… but when I waved… he just gave me a blank look, as though he had no idea who I was."

"Hilde, when did you last see Duo?"

She stiffens.

***

I strain my ears, forcing my bleeding body to crawl through the door, which someone thankfully left ajar, and back into the back room. Perhaps I'm deceiving myself, but I hear the noise of a clip being checked. It snaps quietly into place and I force my left hand to hold tightly over the wound, so I don't leave a trail of blood.

After Hilde left, I was no longer in the mood to pack. She's got a story that would make a romance novel writer proud, but it's nothing I wanted to think about just then. I remember getting up off the couch, dressing absently, and walking out the door.

I don't remember where I went, only that I didn't see anyone I knew and I didn't speak to anyone at all.

Likewise, the flight to L1 was uneventful. I reread my datasheet on Exian, the company I was going there to investigate, and the areas that were setting off the warning flags in the system that had been designed to investigate the dealings of businesses. At the spaceport on the colony, I was greeted by a man that reminded me very strongly of Wufei, in some way that I couldn't quite determine.

*

"Investigator Po, I presume?" a man of about five and a half feet in height says, stepping up to meet me as soon as I was clear of the spaceport gate.

"Yes, and you are?"

"Allan Yan," he says with an oily smile. If there's anything I hate worse than an egotistical maniac, it's a horny egotistical maniac. Allan seems very much along those lines, and where I can stomach Wufei because of his lack of addition in the later category, I can't quite bring myself to accept Allan. "I'm the contact sent from the Exian Corporation to escort you to the company headquarters and make sure you get everything you're interested in. There's a car waiting, if you'll step this way," he extends an arm and I smile tightly before progressing before him in the direction indicated.

It leads us away from crowds, and I'm suddenly very glad that I chose to wear my uniform pants, despite the slight discomfort of the material encasing my burnt leg, it doesn't give this guy the satisfaction of staring at my legs as closely as I'm sure he'd like to. Once we arrive at the limousine that's waiting to take us to the building that houses the company headquarters, I watch as the driver stows my bags and then climb into the door after Allan, keeping my briefcase close at hand.

"You could have put that in the back with your luggage, Miss Po."

"_Investigator_ Po," I correct, "and I could have, but I'm required to keep the documentation on the case with me at all times. In case of tampering."

"Surely you aren't suggesting-"

"Inadvertent or otherwise. My laptop is in here, and too much jostling in the trunk and it might malfunction."

"You should upgrade to a better model then." His words are patronizing, and I bite back the comment that springs to my lips, almost painfully. Instead, I smile tolerantly at him. He grins stupidly and I fight my groan.

It's going to be a long trip.

***

"You're obviously a smart woman, investigator, I'll hand that to you. We've had other people in here to look into the company's activities before, but no one else has been able to find anything." Footsteps.

I crouch behind a large filing cabinet and force my breathing to calm, remain smooth and even. I hear the rustle of clothing that comes with quick movement and in my mind's eye I can see him drawing his gun on Allan's dead body. He sees that I am not there and steps forward, the heel of one foot slapping the ground in the pool of blood that leaks out of Allan's fatal wound.

Shaking, I lift my wrist and glance at my watch.

I am resigned to playing cat and mouse. I can't focus my scattered wits enough to come up with a plan, and I'm unarmed and cornered. Eventually, he's going to find me.

All I have left to hope for is that Wufei or Trowa finds me first.

A little longer.

***

I am on my way to bed, the third night on L1, when I make a decision, I search through my briefcase and find Heero's number. Tomorrow I get shown the accounting office, and I'm sure I won't be able to find anything in the computers. Their organization, if guilty of breaking the arms laws, is well grouped together, I haven't found a shred of anything that would implicate them, and the only person I can think of that could find anything is in the place I just left.

I dial. It rings.

"Hello?" a gruff voice picks up. I wince, having forgotten the time difference between here and there.

"H-Heero?" I try, feeling a lot sillier than I did when I decided to make this phone call. I get a positive 'hn' out of him, and so I continue. "I remember that you said if I ever needed your help…"

"Let me guess, it's got to do with computers, doesn't it?" his voice, though it could be condescending and patronizing, is merely bemused. I guiltily admit it, and he asks for a destination. "When do you need me there?" he asks, and I can imagine him chewing on the end of a pen and checking his schedule.

"Day after tomorrow?" I ask hopefully.

He coughs once and then says, "I was planning on taking some time off anyway. It's good to stretch the legs now and then."

"Shall I take that as a yes?"

"Hai," he says, and for a minute I imagine that voice, low and seductive, as Duo must've heard it. It sends a shiver down my spine that I try very hard to ignore.

"Thank you, Heero," I respond.

"See you in a day or so," he says, and without even a goodbye, he hangs up. Very like him, from what I recall and know. His treatment of Hilde is puzzling, however. I'll have to ask him about that when I take him out to lunch once he's here. And it might even get Allan to stop breathing down my neck.

I set the phone down and stretch out on the hotel bed. I must admit the Preventers put up for a nice room, for once, probably to keep up appearances that I do this all the time and am very particular about-

My phone rings.

I open my eyes and stare at the spackled ceiling. Who could be calling me at this hour? I narrow my eyes as the phone rings a second time, Allan, most likely.

"Po," I say as I pick it up, "go ahead," my voice sounds more exasperated than I've let on being in the past couple days, but my mood is shattered as I hear a little chuckle on the other end of the line.

"Don't you ever answer your phone with a simple greeting, Sally?"

"Wu… Wufei?" he's the last person I expected to hear from.

"How's your mission going?" he asks casually, as though he's calling to tell me that he got a piece of mail that was addressed to me instead of asking me about life threatening stuff.

"Slow," I mutter, running my free hand through my hair to disentangle it from the now-messy braid.

"You sound a little… ruffled," he says, voice suddenly much softer and more caring. "Is something… wrong?"

He certainly seems to have recovered from whatever mood he was in when he called me last time. I could almost picture him biting his lower lip and scuffing his shoe in the dirt when he called last time, now it's almost as if he's… mellow.

"Nothing for you to worry about. The mission is going fine… no complications, as of yet, but then I can't really find anything amiss. So I called in a favor."

"A favor?" he seems, at the very least, interested to hear who it could be.

"Heero's going to come after I have access to the accounting section and work a little of his computer magic, since it's not really my forte. He'll be flying in late tomorrow."

There is silence on the line for a while, and then he says, "I see."

Noise in the background again, and he says something very quickly in Mandarin to someone, "Sally, I've got to go… but I just wanted to say-"

The line cuts off, as though someone has just hung up while he still had the phone in hand. I stare puzzledly at my cell phone for a long while, letting the dial tone fill the silence of the room until the operator hangs it up for me, and then I set it aside, turning to glance out my window and pull my knees up to my chest. The comfortable room suddenly seems very empty, and rather cold. I pull the terrycloth robe closer around me, and hug my legs to my chest. After a minute, curiosity, and the hour, catch up with me, I rise and trail around my suite, turning off the lights until there is only one left on, at the bedside on the night stand. I pull back the covers and let the soft robe fall to the floor, climbing into bed and arranging myself comfortably.

"What were you going to say, Fei?" I whisper before reaching over and turning off the last light, going to sleep.


	9. Extraction

I wake up to the sound of my cell phone ringing at me. Rubbing my eyes, I glance at the clock. It's seven a.m. I roll over, trying to ignore it, but in the end, the incessant ringing wins and I just wake up. "Hello, Po here."

"What hotel are you staying at?" the voice on the other end of the line is clear, sharp, and exacting. Exactly like the man that's using it.

"Heero? How did you-" I cut myself off I called Heero a day ago, unsure if he could make it up here in time for me to still have access to the computers I need him to look over, "On second thought, I'd really rather not know how you got here so fast. I'm staying at…" I glance with bleary eyes at the stationary next to the phone, "the Continental," I pause and take a second to chuckle at a hotel in the colonies being named 'Continental', and then shrug when I hear his responding noise, low in his throat. Again I'm reminded of how he sounds, and get a flash of him whispering something in the same voice. Down girl, I tell myself, utterly confused. "Room 1531."

"Want to let the desk know I'll be coming up? I'd hate to have to break in."

"Sure, where… where are you calling from at the moment?"

"I'm at the space port, I just got in."

"You sound horribly awake for someone who just got off a shuttle flying to L1, how long have you been awake?" He chuckles a little, and a chill runs down my spine. "What?"

"You're just like Duo."

I blink, again wondering how I keep finding myself wrapped up with a man I haven't seen in four… five years. "What do you mean by that?"

"You'd bother to exchange pleasantries with someone who's only waiting to hang up the phone before coming to see you face to face."

I grumble a second, seething, and hit the end button on my cell rather angrily. I look around the relatively tidy room and try to ignore what happened the night before. Allan had insisted on walking me up to my hotel room, and presumed that I would let him in, as though the politeness I've been showing him has been encouragement to more than a business relationship.

It was all I could do to keep from hitting him and tossing his unconscious body out an airlock somewhere. But I have to remember that I work for the Preventers, and that sort of action is frowned upon. So I just politely declined offering him coffee, or water, or anything, despite the fact that I don't have to pay for anything in this hotel room, or that I have someone that I…

I cut off my own thought, again asking myself what Wufei was starting to say when we got cut off. I know that I'm probably getting my hopes up a little too high by thinking that he would be saying what I hope he might be saying. I can't even really let myself imagine that he would say that, because I couldn't accept him if he did propose something to me…

We work together.

I roll out of bed, disgusted with myself for obsessing about _him_ when I've got a job to do, and step into the bathroom for a quick shower. There's no way that Heero can get here faster than I can get ready.

None.

***

"Very smart." More footsteps. "You've probably already figured out that I can't let you leave here alive. But I'm not expecting you to make it easy for me." He pauses, "I'm glad you aren't."

There is a faraway noise at the door. "One of yours, no doubt, causing trouble."

I press my hand even tighter over my shoulder. My arm is getting cold, numb, and my grip is slipping. Not good. My sleeve is soaked down to the bicep, and I'm sweating.

***

There's a sharp rap on the door outside, and I brush my hair back from my face, sweeping invisible strands that have escaped my braids back and into place before I rub the lotion into my hands and go out to answer the door.

Unfortunately, as I lean forward to look through the peep hole, I see the one person I'd rather see fall off a cliff while lit on fire with gasoline and methanol than at my doorway is on the other side, with a heavy sigh, I open the door.

"Hello Allan."

He smiles and motions that he'd like to come inside, but I shake my head. "I'm waiting on someone. A specialist I had to call in," I add, eyes challenging. He regards me innocently, and my confidence, for a moment, waivers. He seems utterly unperturbed by these proceedings. He hasn't seemed upset despite what I've done over the last five days, he's… actually been rather helpful.

We stand in the doorway and something in the back of my mind reminds me, 'He may just not know anything.'

"So if you'll excuse me…"

There's the noise of a throat clearing from behind Allan and to one side. I can't help the smile that comes to my face as Allan turns to find himself face to face with Heero Yuy. He's dressed his part, as I hoped he would, wearing a business suit with a tie that's pristine, and a pair of glasses with thick black rims. He adjusts them and offers Allan a hand shake, which the disturbing lackey takes and looks overconfident afterwards.

And here I thought Duo was a good actor. Apparently Heero learned more than I thought he did from his lover. I think about that for a moment as Heero brushes past Allan and into the suite behind me, and I say to Allan, "I'll be by around," I check my watch, "One. If you would like to meet us at the front lobby, I'll need access to archives and accounting."

He is supposedly a facilitator, after all.

I close the door and turn, seeing that Heero's barely got a slightly smug expression on his face, and he sets down a small bag on the couch, and a briefcase on the coffee table. "So what are we looking at?"

"And _you're_ just like Wufei," I comment, stepping over to retrieve my own briefcase and the paperwork that's inside there.

"What do you mean by that?"

"The minute you do see someone, it's right down to business," I say, setting the files in front of him. The look he gives me is vaguely mischievous, and the closest thing to a grin I've ever seen him wear on the serious and strong face of his.

***

"Oh? You thought we wouldn't know you'd sent for backup?"

I guess I'm lucky. I should be thankful I didn't go into shock. I'm not quite sure what it means, but I guess it's got something to do with being shot enough times that my body no longer registers the shock of it.

Disturbing indeed.

I remember mentioning that to Allan, before he… before he got shot. I mentioned Wufei, and that I'd called in backup.

"Don't think that will help you. Your precious…" he pauses, "Wufei," and the way he says that voice scares me deep down, "is a bit indisposed at the moment. No one is coming to save you, Investigator. Why not just make this easy on all of us involved and show yourself?"

Still his muffled footsteps on the unpadded carpet. I search the wall behind me for some sort of escape route. If only I had a gun or… something.

A knife.

A chair.

Heero.

Not that I think he still keeps up with the old line of work, but I don't doubt he'd be able to think of a way out of here.

***

"So knowing what you know," Heero says sidelong to me as we walk back towards the hotel from the car that brought us back from the headquarters. "Watch your back, Sally."

I glance at him, "You don't think-"

"Kierns is no fool. I'm beginning to wonder if he isn't a part of some bigger picture that we are missing… He'll know, soon, that we got into the real records hidden under the surface." He laughs a little self-deprecatingly, "I'm good, but I'm a little rusty. It's what happens when you don't keep up-"

"Perishable skills," I offer, leaning forward to press the button on the elevator. He nods. "When do you fly out?"

"In the morning, I think," he says as we both glance around the lobby a little anxiously. "Mind if I sleep in your suite tonight?"

"Not at all," I say with a heavy sigh. The elevator doors open and I step inside. He follows, quick on my heels, and I hit the button for the fifteenth floor. I lean back against the polished metal on the inside of the elevator and glance at my reflection in the mirrors on the side, and find him staring at me. "What?" I ask quietly.

"You haven't looked me straight in the eye since I got here," he says, folding his arms a little uncomfortably in the suit jacket. He's not used to wearing something so formal, I can tell. I wonder what he does for a living, now.

"Haven't I?"

"It's Hilde, isn't it?" the words shock me, and I turn my head to look at him. His dark, almost fathomless blue eyes are staring at the marble floor of the elevator, and he doesn't look up at me for a long minute.

I start to speak, but he cuts me off.

"And that comment I made about you being like Duo."

"Actually, it isn't so much…"

"Then it's Wufei," he finishes simply, turning to press his back up against the elevator a foot or so away from me. I start to speak, but he cuts me off. Again. "You shouldn't worry, he's nothing like me, when it comes down to it."

"What do you mean, 'he's nothing like you'? The two of you are-"

"We're different people, Sally."

"I know that!" I nearly snap. I don't think I've ever raised my voice at Heero before. It doesn't necessarily make me feel good to do it now. Not over _him_. "But you've got to admit you have similar dispositions, at times. And you're both very closed off."

"We're _all_ closed off," Heero says, turning to me for a moment. The elevator stops and the doors open. "Wufei… Trowa… Quatre… Duo," he hesitates for a moment on that name, as though tasting it. He still loves Duo, no matter what happened between the two of them, I know it. "Even you."

"I know I'm closed off." I turn and step off the elevator, leading the way down the hall to my suite, "Don't you think I know that? I never said I wasn't."

"But you implied it," Heero says in a neutral voice.

"The only thing I meant to imply was that Wufei _won't_ open up."

"He doesn't know how," he replies simply, waiting as I open the door. "It takes time, and someone who is willing to teach you."

"Who's going to teach me?" I mutter, flopping exhaustedly on the couch. I didn't even bother to lock the door behind us, but thankfully Heero does, and then turns towards me.

"I could, if you like."

***

I keep my head low and crab walk as best I can along the cabinet towards the desk where Heero started all this trouble. He steps out in front of me so quickly that I almost run into his legs. He holds his gun aloft, aimed directly at my forehead.

Slowly, I back up, moving away from him slightly. Not quite far or fast enough to be considered an attempt at escape.

"Can you stand?"

I look up at my executioner and feel a calm pass over me. Somewhere outside I hear more commotion, gunshots. I do not respond to his question, but sit back on my haunches. The coppery stench of blood mingling with sweat as it trickles down my arm is one of the little things I notice. A wound I'll never feel. Just like how I'll never be able to tell Fei how…

The gunshots cease.

"Whatever happens, someone is going to die today," the gunman says.

***

It was last night when he said that, and this morning he left. I walked into the office building feeling like there were a million knives waiting around every corner to leap out and stab me, and Allan kept close to my side when I didn't bat him away like I normally would have.

"Something's different about you today, Investigator," he mentioned, leaning close to me, "Do I sense a change of mood?"

We were just out in the hallway from the archives and accounting department, and that was when the first bullet was fired. It came so quickly that I barely had time to react to the sound, and narrowly missed having a wound in more than just my shoulder.

Like my head.

Allan looked completely surprised, and so when I heard the next gunshot I grabbed him and dragged him along behind me as I ducked into the accounting department reception area. It was, unsurprisingly, empty, and so I forced him down into the little alcove while I quickly called to Trowa and Wufei for backup.

*

I nod, and he takes more careful aim with his gun. Something outrageously automatic, with a silencer and a laser sight. I want to close my eyes. I don't want to look up the barrel of his scratched up weapon, pewter gunmetal scuffed from long use.

But I can't.

My eyes are locked open, empty of myself. I have never believed in heaven, but I can hear the voices of angels coming from somewhere, if I pay close attention.

He closes his eyes in preparation of pulling the trigger, and time slows for me again. Just as before, it's shattered by the report of a gun. The gunman falls sideways, his motion following the trail of blood out of the side of his temple, and the gun falls from his fingers. Reaching forward with my left hand quickly, I grab the gun from where it fell from his limp fingers and whirl on the doorway, in the direction of the shot.

Trowa, in little better shape than I, a bloody hole in his right forearm and some wound on his left side, is the angel whose voice I heard. I lower the gun and Trowa stumbles into the room.

"Where's Wufei?" I ask in a hoarse voice.

"L2," Trowa responds, offering me a hand up off the floor. Once on my left, the two of us move in recon formation out of the records room.


	10. Something Borrowed

Huddled in a blanket in the sleeping cabin of the small shuttle Trowa commandeered in order to come and save me, I wonder what happened to Wufei, and why he wasn't the one to come in and extract me. Normally, if one or the other of us has needed help, we've been sure to be on the team to go and help extract.

But not this time. I glance up as the door opens, but my mind is not on the man that steps through the door. Instead, it's on Wufei, who is absent.

He may be bleeding.

Hurt.

I am bleeding, and hurt, but somehow it doesn't seem important.

I glance up, finally, and my eyes are focused on the events of the now. Something Heero said to me last night won't let me focus on Wufei too much right now. He said something along the lines of 'there's only one way to know how someone feels, and that is to ask them yourself.' I can't ask Wufei right now, so I might as well get on with whatever Trowa has for me.

Trowa glides in, cleaned up and looking none the worse for the wear, except for a bandaged forearm. "I see you're awake." It was easier to bandage him up than myself, especially since it was done on the go after we made our reports to the colony law enforcement. We moved quickly to get to the shuttle, Trowa's urgency silent, but present in the air like the silence at the instant of an explosion.

"What happened?" I ask, nervous about his nervousness. There is an emptiness in his normally passive eyes that scares me.

"The headlines haven't come out yet." He won't talk about his own mission, just yet, it seems. "Une says they'll be delayed until the Commissioner of Arms' Distribution files the case against Exian. Once they're in court, it'll be safe to -"

"No. I want to talk to Lady Une," I cut him off, my eyes boring into him. I will him silently to speak, but, as usual, nothing forces Trowa into action, nothing short of a natural disaster… or a war.

"I figured as much. I'll set up a laptop in here later." He pauses to stare at me carefully, looking for signs of shock and fatigue, most likely, with a trained eye. "Do you need anything?"

"A hospital," I say evenly, "but I have a feeling I won't be getting to one any time soon, so no, except some fresh bandages." He nods, and without another word, he turns to leave, the doors wooshing shut automatically behind him. The medicinal smell Trowa wore into the room lingers after him in the stale, recycled air of the shuttle. I glance around, and feel like curling up and crying.

How could this mission have gone so wrong, so quickly? What is it that Exian is connected to that involved that gunman knowing where Wufei was? And why won't Trowa talk to me?

I swing my legs carefully over the edge of the small bed, glancing across at the other one, and it's obvious disuse. "Fei," I whisper, "Fei, please be all right."

*

Once we land in L2, Trowa marches me towards the main spaceport without waiting for me to comment, bundling me into a long coat as we head out into the terminal in hopes of hiding my bandaging from the civilians. The hotel will have what little I left there sent back to Earth, undoubtedly, and now, apparently, it's my turn.

"Trowa-"

"Here's your ticket." He shoves the paper into my pocket, and then continues to strong arm me towards the check-in station. "You'll be flying into Chicago, that's where your lay-over is. It's only a couple of hours. You should be back in London by eight tomorrow."

"Trowa Barton, stop right there," I say in the best commanding voice I can muster at the moment. He doesn't. It's hard to stop Trowa, about as hard as it is to stop an avalanche, or a flood. He's like a force of nature when he's got his mind set on something. And I'm too nervous to be truly commanding.

"Keep an eye on Jean for me, I know he's not as faithful as…" he starts to say a name, and I can see in his eyes who he means, but suddenly he cuts himself off and steps up to the counter with me.

"As Quatre?" I ask quietly into his ear as he puts the ticket on the counter after taking it back from my pocket. He stiffens a moment and then continues to address the airline clerk.

"My wife hurt her shoulder, and some business has come up that keeps me from going with her just now, can you be sure she's comfortable?"

The young woman makes an enthusiastic reply, and I glare coldly at Trowa. Not that we haven't used the ruse before, but just now it hurts to hear someone lie about calling me their wife. He smells of ointment and bandages, from where I'm standing, his left arm around my waist securely, to keep me from trying to move away from him. Instead of fighting, I sigh and lean against him, letting my head rest on his breastbone for a moment.

He lifts his hand to smooth my hair in the fraternal manner that he has with me from time to time, and the airline clerk narrows her eyes a little enviously. "Take care of him," I whisper, looking up into Trowa's eyes. He nods, once, and finishes talking to the clerk. I let the words drift past me. Obviously, it's not safe for me to go with him to find Wufei, otherwise he wouldn't mind me coming along, and I'm a little worried, and frankly pretty nervous, about the whole thing.

But I'm injured, and I've got a report to make, and I don't have the strength to fight with right now.

He walks me away from the ticket counter, tucking the ticket into the inside pocket of the jacket he wrapped me in when we left the shuttle. It takes me a minute, my jarred senses fumbling for the reason it's so familiar to me.

This is Wufei's coat.

"No," Trowa says, glancing up at the display over the passageway to try and find my gate, "Jean isn't as faithful as Quatre."

His voice is bitter, and cold. Whatever happened between the two of them isn't buried in Trowa's heart as well as it seems to be buried in Quatre's. That is, if he's so happily married and having children… or on his way towards it.

"But don't worry about-" he cuts himself off as we pass by a security guard, eyeing the other man warily. Has he gone mad? Are the colonies so unsafe that he can't even mention a name aloud to me in a public place? "About _him_," he finishes.

Before I quite realize what's happening, we've reached the gate, and there's a little time until my flight. He mumbles something, barely moving his lips, that reminds me no one is as silent as Trowa sometimes appears to be, but if I wasn't tucked so protectively against his side I wouldn't have heard the mutter of, "I'll feel much better when you're safe on Earth."

I lean into his side, closing my eyes. I don't want to think about war anymore. Or about fighting. I'm twenty-seven, and my body is accustomed to bullet holes. I'm twenty-seven, and I feel like I grew up with a gun in my hands, with blood on my clothing. I'm twenty-seven, and…

I pull the coat tighter around me and take a deep breath of its scent. Tiger's balm and … deodorant? No, not deodorant. Around me, suddenly the brimming spaceport seems horribly empty, and the lean, strong side I'm leaning into feels like rock.

I'm twenty-seven, and I feel like I'm the loneliest woman that still draws breath.

"Why did you say that?" I ask, rhetorically. Trowa starts a little and glances down at me. Almost as though he forgot he was holding me so tightly to his side. He turns to look around again and doesn't comment. "Why… why now?"

"I can't answer that," he says, and as I stare up the few inches at his profile, it seems harsh and like every edge could cut, "but… I'll do my best to be sure he comes back… to you."

"Trowa," I begin, about to protest. I'm about to say something stupid… to deny it, perhaps, or to say that there's no way that he could feel anything for me, but in the back of my mind, his cut off sentence echoes. His voice is quick, rushed, and yet it sounds impassioned, as though… _"Sally, I've got to go… but I just wanted to say-"_

"I know how he feels about you," Trowa comments, starting to guide me towards the boarding doors. His hand reaches inside the jacket and pulls out my ticket, and my identification, which he puts in my hand as he gently lets go of me. "Because it's the way I feel about Quatre. Now," he takes a step back, lifting one of my hands to kiss my knuckles, the ruse maintained, "get on the plane darling, I'll be home shortly."

No more words. He turns, and walks away. I pause, confused by all of this, and then at the cough from the stewardess, I move up in line. I'm boarding the shuttle, and Trowa is disappearing into the small crowds at the entrance of the spaceport. Once on board, the flight attendant makes sure I'm comfortable, offering me some pain medication, and then I ask to make a phone call. Cell phones aren't permitted while the shuttle is en route, so I'll have to use one of the shuttle phones to make my call. A preoccupation from before I left on this mission comes back to me as I think about home once again, about London, and my apartment…

My father.

More of Wufei's words come back to me. _"I wanted to apologize… My actions were… inexcusable."_ And I nearly break down.

"Misses Po… are you all right, ma'am?"

"Fine," I reply, wiping my eyes and wincing a little at the stiffness in my shoulder. The first thing I'm doing in London, if I don't pass out in Chicago from shock, is get myself in to see a doctor. "Can you repeat those instructions?"

*

Needless to say, Lady Une was highly displeased with the outcome of the mission, and my response to the idea of the cover-up. It wasn't her idea, apparently, but the Commissioner's office's directive.

The expression on her face is tight and angry, but not with me.

"If there's nothing else, Sally…" she begins.

"Sorry to take up your time, Lady Une, but there _is_ something else."

"Oh?"

"I need some time off."

Her brow furrows slightly, "How much time off?"

"My father is dying, Lady Une, I can't exactly say."

"How…" I watch realization dawn on her face. I take it that Wufei… didn't tell her a thing about why I spilled the coffee all over myself then. Her expression clears and saddens almost instantaneously, and she nods. "Is there anything I can do?"

"Not really. But I'd appreciate it if it didn't get out to the entire office where I'm going." She nods. "Thank you, ma'am."

"The sorrow, it will pass… eventually," she adds.

Am I even sad?

Before she can break the connection, I ask, "Lady Une, about Trowa and Wufei's mission," I suck up my courage and stare her straight in the eye. "What's going on?"

"We're not quite sure," she says, in what we operatives call her 'tight-lipped' voice. "The mission has been compromised."

"Are the two of them being extracted?"

"We're waiting on confirmation from Trowa on Wufei's coordinates before we send anyone in."

I nod, quietly, and a voice interrupts on her end. "I'll see you when you get in to London, Sally," Une says, turning to look at the out-of-site speaker. "See yourself to a doctor in Chicago, and take some time to rest up… unless nothing abnormal happened that you think is necessary for us to know…"

"The gunman… the last one… he knew Wufei's name, and that I had backup coming…"

Lady Une seems to ponder that for a minute and then nods. "That may be of some use. I'll need you to come in and fill out some paperwork, but other than that consider yourself officially on sabbatical, Sally."

I nod, half of me saying that I should salute her, and the other half of me says that I should offer her some sort of empathy on whoever it is she lost… and then I think about it a little more, and just nod. I wasn't ever any great fan of Treize.

His men tried to kill me a lot. Not that I can blame them, I was standing in their way, but the principle of it all keeps me from reciprocating her empathy. We cut the transmission, and I replace the phone in it's cradle while the screen before me goes black. I pull the jacket a little tighter around me, hoping to find some hidden fountain of warmth its owner may have left for me, but in the end it's only the same lifeless material it was when he bought it. I fold my arms and try moving my feet to keep circulation going well, and the stewardess asks me if I would like a blanket. There's a queer expression on her face. I wonder if she can smell the blood on my bandages, the death and gunpowder that clings to this coat wherever it goes…

"No, thank you."

**

It was raining, and we were in Moscow, on assignment to investigate a gang that was getting a little too powerful and a little too vocal with their protests against the peace being enforced upon the people. It's something I've never been quite sure if I agreed with about the Preventers. Peace, like all things, must be chosen, and when we take that choice away from the people…

Are we any better than dictators that have come before us?

I was rather silent, and Wufei, for once, was rather cold. Even though normally he is impervious to the world around him, the iron man was feeling a bit touched by the weather. Moscow in early fall isn't particularly temperate, and I'm sure Fei, colony born and raised, would be glad that we'd be leaving the area before the real coldsnap of winter came to the town.

"It's ridiculous," I recall him grumbling, "Why is it that you're completely warm and I'm so frigid I don't have to iron my shirts anymore?"

I chuckled a little, not bothering to hide it behind my hand. "Well the coat helps," I said, pulling the hood a little farther over my forehead to fight the invading raindrops that were getting blown into my face. Wufei, unlike me, was wearing only his standard issue Preventers jacket, which wasn't, at the time, very thick or insulated. Since then there have been need-enforced improvements in its design, but at the time he was getting drenched because of the lack of lining or waterproofing on the material it was made of. I had on a three-quarter length black hooded trench coat.

He looked at me enviously, and I looked away, unsure of how to deal with him looking so closely at me. When you work with someone, it's easy to spend a lot of time not looking at them. The idea that he was staring at me was mildly disturbing, and a little unwelcome. I've come a long way in my opinion of him since then.

"How was I supposed to know it _rains_ in Moscow? Do I look Russian?"

I was tempted to comment, but as I glanced back at him, the look on his face made me stop. I went back to scanning the street we were walking down on our way back to the hotel we were staying in during the investigation, and I saw the shop and the display in the window.

"Come on then," I said, veering to cross the little street. He gave me an incredulous look and I frowned, stepping into a puddle in order to grab his arm and drag him after me.

"Where are you taking me, onna?" he grumbled, but followed along after me anyway, unresisting. We had been partners about three years at that point, and he was just starting to let other people touch him. Even after I blew up at him and threatened to stop being his partner… it was a long battle to keep him from flinching at contact.

But slowly he softened his rocky exterior towards me.

"You're cold, right?"

"And?" his condescending tone almost made me shove him back into the little river running in the gutter of the street, and wait for a car to splash him there, but I didn't. At the time I thought I was showing marvelous restraint, now I know I was just scared that he'd scream. He's got this voice, when he screams, that scares me more than getting shot… but then whenever he screams at me he always seems to have his heart in his throat.

"You're going to buy yourself a new jacket."

*

He fought me on that one, violently, almost. But after I had the head of the store set his jacket aside to dry out, and slipped the long trench coat on his shoulders, he stopped protesting so much. I encouraged him to buy the coat… the scarf he bought himself. It was beautiful, white, long, and it had small tassels on the ends that were soft as… something very soft. On occasion he's wrapped it around my neck when my face was so cold it was turning colors of it… but it's one thing, along usually with the coat, that he rarely parts with.

That he's parted with it now speaks too much for me to understand. I'm afraid to think of the circumstances under which he let it go, and so I curl up as best I can in the seat and surrender to unconsciousness.


	11. Jet Lag

Chicago is a mess. Exchanging my ticket is a nightmare, and because of the holiday season, I have to fly out at midnight tomorrow, rather than some reasonable hour. I'd give an arm and a leg to get out even two hours earlier. I hate planes when I'm tired. So instead, I get myself out to the taxi pick-up area and hail myself a cab with my good arm.

The hospital isn't too far away, and it's reassuring that I haven't seen a single person that I know since I got off the plane. The taxi ride is short, and cold, and I wish that I somehow had thicker skin or socks, because I can hardly feel my toes in the back of this badly-heated cab.

The blissfully short ride is, however, uneventful, and I get out at the hospital and make my way to the emergency room as Lady Une instructed.

"You'll need to fill out these forms, ma'am," the young desk attendant says to me. She's one of those types that's overly perky and annoyingly upbeat at any hour of the day, most likely considering it part of their job description to present an overly cheerful, false face to the world. "And then take a seat. We'll be with you shortly."

I nod, wordlessly taking the clipboard and the oversized pen, and make my way to a seat out of the direct path of anyone. For a certified doctor, who used to work in places like this one, I have never liked hospitals, or doctor's offices. There is something disturbing in the orderliness of them. I much prefer to do my medical work on the spot, improvising when necessary, than to having a stocked and categorized office and staff behind me.

It's really why, after the first Eve War, when Lady Une offered me a position at the Preventers under the classification of senior field operative, I accepted so readily. I was working at a high brow clinic in Puerto Rico at the time, and I hated every minute of the clean, sterile walls and the fully stocked back room with a clientele that rivaled the ranks of Romefellor and both a helipad and a runway outside. Not that I was the big fish in a little pan, on the contrary, I was qualified when it comes to practical skills, but I didn't have the PR experience for the position.

When I tendered my hasty resignation, the senior staff were relieved and saddened to see me go, but far from being shocked.

_ "You must understand, Doctor Po, it's not that we don't value your contributions… on the contrary, we're sad to be loosing someone of your talent. But everyone in this room is well aware that you weren't made to be just a doctor."_

Idly twirling the pen in my hand, I have to wonder if the staff spokesman was right about that, and if I'm remembering his words correctly. The mind, in that manner, plays many tricks upon you. What you think you remember properly you can be thinking of in entirely the wrong manner.

I finish the form and take it back up to the window, but the bubbly young woman is absent. I leave it on the counter and return to my seat, slouching. I shrug carefully out of his jacket, but keep it close to me, on my lap. The other people in the emergency room waiting area are mostly older people, probably suffering from more common ailments than a gunshot wound, frostbite and the like. The bandage on my shoulder, and the tears Trowa and I made in my shirt to get it bandaged properly, cause a little bit of a spectacle.

"Did it hurt much, dearie?" one nondescript old woman asks, shifting two seats closer to me. "This city is always so dangerous this time of year, I was telling my son just last week…"

"Miss Po?" a doctor interrupts the nice old woman, and she blinks her eyes behind her large glasses, turning, as I do, to see the doctor standing across the small open space staring at me with a faint glower on her face.

"That would be me," I respond.

"This way, if you would please," she almost shouts it, I'm guessing she's new to the ER. I'm not in the best of health, for sure, but I'm nowhere near needing to be reprimanded for laxness in getting to medical treatment.

I can tell this is bound to be one fun examination.

*

Dozing slightly in the terminal, drugged up on quite a bit of needless pain medication, I feel my mind wander past the most recent memories of 'Doctor Phisher' giving me the third degree about proper care and treatment of bullet wounds, and how, as a fellow member of the medical profession, I ought to know better than to just wind it tightly in guaze with no other dressing…

The woman sure knew how to babble. And I suppose the extraction of the offending bullet, and the stitches, were enough of a consolation to her constant chatter that I can forgive her whatever many failings she had.

Instead, I let my mind wander to Wufei, and feel a waterfall of worry between where I am and wherever he is. My mother used to tell me that if I tried hard enough, I could reach someone with my thoughts, and that I'd be able to know if they were all right or not. I've never tried it, but something tells me I'm going to have to get past all the worry I have over him if I'm going to be able to 'reach' him, like my mother used to say.

The world around me seems as though it is a dream, and suddenly, I can see through the eyes of what must be my dream-self. I walk up to the waterfall, and try to step through, thinking that's the most logical way to end it, as though my presence in it will dispel it, but I hear a hundred echoes of my own voice, with little hints of friends of mine wrapped into one or another of them, vocalizing my worries for and about Wufei to me.

Frustrated, I start to back up, until I hear a quietness in the cacophony of my own voice, the repeated thoughts spreading a little, as though, on the other side, he were trying to reach me as well.

"Fei," I call out, but my voice is drown out by the rest of the voices in the waterfall, "Fei can you hear me?"

"Sally," his voice is faint, his impression within the dream is fainter. He must be very weak, wherever he is. I start to push forward, painfully, when I feel a hand shake me, hard.

Opening my eyes in the waking world, I find a smiling gate attendant looking down at me. "Miss, boarding for flight 1604 to London is commencing, are you on that flight?"

I rub my eyes lightly with my left hand and glance at the clock, "Impossible, I couldn't have been…"

He nods politely. "I'm sorry to say that you slept for several hours. Don't worry, I've been keeping an eye on you. You really shouldn't sleep in public places."

I start to respond, but the loudspeaker overhead announces the same information he just related to me, and I can hear Wufei's old admonishment in this kind gate attendant's words. I nod and stand up, fishing my ticket out of the pocket of the jacket. Together, the two of us walk over to the boarding area, and I hand my ticket over to the young woman inspecting people's tickets.

I take my seat on the plane and lean against the window, a stewardess furnished pillow between my head and the hard plastic molding. I can almost hear Wufei's chiding voice in the back of my mind…

**

"You're hopeless, woman," he said to me, shaking me gently to wake me up. The two of us were waiting in the terminal of the Buenos Aires International Airport for our flight back to London after one relatively travel-intensive mission. Heading into the rainforests in Brazil to investigate guerrilla activity wasn't my favorite way to spend the hottest month of the year in South America, but the assignment had been unavoidable.

The tan on my skin from all the time spent in an open-topped Jeep Wrangler hadn't done much for my good attitude. I looked great, but as usual, after tanning, my body was lethargic. After driving most of the last few days out in the sun to reach our airport in time to get back to London on our scheduled departure date, I was sleepier than if I'd been given sleeping pills with a glass of red wine on a full stomach. I had konked out at the gate and Wufei had woken me up to get on the plane.

Unlike me, who had developed a bronzy tan over the past couple days of driving, Wufei had simply gotten red in the face, and on his neck. I figured it was more than just his Asian heritage, but probably the idea of growing up under sun lamps in the colonies rather than the real thing on earth. He had a restless time trying to relax because of the tightness of his face and the skin on his arms and neck being burnt to a crispy red.

I would've laughed, if he didn't look so utterly furious about the whole situation. "I'm hopeless? I offered you sunblock… it was your choice not to use it."

"You fall asleep everywhere… if someone weren't watching over you, it would be easy for you to be kidnapped… or worse," he offered me a hand up, and once I took his hand he hauled me to my feet with that sometimes disturbing strength he has.

"Don't get mad at me just because you're cranky and irritable, Fei," I grumbled. It was one of the few times that he got close to me, tugging me close to stare me straight in the eye, one hand latched onto my wrist and the other holding his dufflebag.

"I'm not mad," he breathed, and the force of his words was louder and more striking than his presentation of them, he searched my eyes, speaking softly, and looking like there was something he wanted me to know, "I'm just pointing out that you ought to be more careful."

**

Six months ago. He let go of my hand, and unceremoniously scooped up my duffle, carrying both, rather heavy bags, effortlessly over to the gate and handing over our tickets while I followed wordlessly behind.

He used to admonish me about things like that quite a bit, more so recently. There's a nagging feeling in the back of my mind that tells me that if I really tried, I'd be able to figure out what it was he was trying to tell me when he got cut off.

At the airport in London I get off the plane, blissfully lacking any luggage to carry. They don't call it _lugg_-age for nothing. With a dull ache in my right shoulder beginning, I walk out and flag down a taxi. The wind and the snow together make it a little difficult to do, with only one fully functional upper appendage, but somehow I manage to keep the coat, and not pull my strained arm too much.

What would you have to say to me now, Fei? I'm barely coherent enough to give the cabby my address without slurring my words, and the kind man gives me an affectionate glance and says that I'm very lucky that I didn't get some other taxi, in my condition. If I were a little more together, I might be insulted by what he's insinuating with that statement, but as it is, I'm not.

"Rough night?" he asks.

I start to respond, but he just nods his head, commiserating. Outside of the cab, the snow falls in puffy snowflakes that stick to the windows of the taxi like it's covered in glue… or sugar. I lean back in the seat and pretend not to notice the driver's worried glances at me in the rear view mirror.

"Buckle up," he says, stopping at a light, "The snow's sticking to the pavement worse than it is to this car."

The rest of the short trip to my apartment goes by in a blur and by the time I get out of the elevator on my floor, the seventh, I manage to make it into my apartment, closing it and locking it behind me, before my waning strength finally seems to give out. I lurch over onto the couch and collapse face first onto it, the dimness of the room going darker as the few seconds of my remaining consciousness tick by.

*

In the morning, or rather, the midafternoon when I wake up, I feel the ache in my arm in the background of my mind, and vague images of my dreams hover in my view. I shake my head to clear it and glance around my apartment's main room, lit with dim gray sunlight coming through the clouds outside. Snow is falling, whipped around by winds that threatened me last night by tugging at his jacket that I'm still wearing. Slowly, I sit up and peel the jacket off, experiencing a sudden feeling of cold. I itch to put it back on, but stop myself, standing, instead and moving to turn up the thermostat.

Life as usual, as it has to be. I scoop the mail up off the floor and turn on the television, switching it idly to a news channel to hear if there's been any report of the small-scale shootout I had at Exian on L1. Vanity, probably what kept me from falling into shock. I had to live to hear what the reports would say about my little escapade.

Everyone, I reason, has at least that much mortal vanity in them. If I'm going to die, I at least want it to be big and flashy… something someone will hear about, and have the chance to remember. I sort through my mail. Bills, bills…

And I nearly drop the small pile as I find one that's written with an address from Indonesia. That's the last place Lin was… I half stagger, half stumble into the kitchen, pushing the button next to the flashing light on my answering machine.

"You have six unheard messages," the faintly female computerized voice says.

"Oh really?" I retort, pulling out a chair as I drift about the kitchen, debating on fixing myself something to eat.

"Message one," there is a tone, and then the first message plays, "Miss Po, this is Martin Kase, with Chase Financial, we're in charge of dealing with your family's estate… I'm terribly sorry to bother you so close to Christmas, especially after what's happened. We're all very sorry to hear about your loss. If you could please give me a call, my number is 778-1023-1426."

"Loss? Father…" my heartbeat speeds up as I punch on the coffee machine, checking the filter, I pull a knife out of the drawer and rip open Lin's letter.

Wrestling it out of the envelope, I'm distracted by the monotonic, "Message two," and the next beep.

"Sally, it's me. Lin. I-" his next words are obscured by a thick static that comes over the phone line he's using, so garbled that I can't make out what he's saying. And then, once the static is clear there's nothing but dialtone on the machine.

Puzzled, I unfold the letter.

Unlike my brother's tight, responsible handwriting, with his perfect grammar and spelling, which I'm expecting to find, there's a typed letter inside. My heart sinks.

It's some sort of an official notice.

"Message three," the answering machine beeps again. I don't know how much more of this I can stand. Weird messages, Wufei gone missing… my father…

"Sai Lei," a raspy voice seems to fill the kitchen, and I am at once afraid that this is the last of my father I have. His breathing is too labored, his speech too slurred. "I know that you are probably out on one of the missions that you find so important… and whether they are more important than me after all we have been through… No matter what else has passed between us, we are still family, and I cannot be sure how I am to respond to that idea, that a job can be more important than your family. We have both been mean to one another, my daughter, we have both been unkind… but I know that it was always out of love that we quarreled. It is the way of the spirit that we both carry in us." He takes a wheezing breath on the answering machine and I hold mine, the letter in my fingers crumpling as I silently will the old man to hang on. "It would do me… great honor… if you would come home. I would… like to see you once more." He says a few words in Mandarin that I cannot quite make out, they are uttered between wheezes and a nasty cough, and then hangs up the phone.

The letter in my hands seems blurry as I look down to read it, the fourth message going forgotten in the background, as the unbelieveable words burn into my mind. The letterhead reads that it is from the company Lin worked for in Indonesia.

_ 'Due to our inability to reach Po Zhou Shui with this news, Po Sai Lei, we must regretfully inform you of the death of your brother, Po Sai Lin.'_ The rest of the letter is meaningless, giving a time and a date of the accident which took my brother's life from him, and from us. There is mention of a young woman he was seeing at the time, and that she has asked to get in touch with me, and my father, but I fold the letter quietly after reading it all the way through, and set it on the table, opposite the bills.

"Message five," the machine chimes in, and it feels like the computerized voice is mocking me. The beep seems longer, and the voice I recognize even though it gives no name, and despite the obvious strain on it for some reason, even through the static of an interspace call… "I love you," is ground out, probably through clenched teeth. My heart leaps to my throat and what tears I could not shed over the letter announcing my brother's demise come spilling out now.

I bite my lip, wiping furiously at my eyes in an attempt to stop the tears that are falling, but nothing seems to work. I am stronger than this, I admonish myself. I am…

"Message six," the machine says. "Sally, it's Lady Une. I'm sorry to disturb you at home, but something's come up, and I need you to come into Headquarters as soon as you get this."


	12. Stress Fractures

The elevator door opens, and I stomp through it. Whatever the hell Lady Une has to say to me, better be damn important. I told her that I was taking a vacation… I told her that-

My thoughts are brought to a dead halt as I look around the office.

"What the hell happened here?" I say, incredulous and nearly shouting. My voice sounds like Wufei's, a tiny voice in the back of my mind says.

Aside from the holiday decorations, which are bright in evergreens and crimson reds, the office looks as though it's been through nothing short of an Eve War, orchestrated by the five infamous pilots that I work with from time to time. The fluorescent lights are only half working, there are scorch marks where they either blew a circuit from overload or… something blew up… The windows of the offices are cracked like large spider webs in some places, and in others entire panes of glass have been broken, and the pieces still have yet to be cleaned up, I notice as my boots crunch some of the larger bits under them deeper into the carpet. The person to answer my question is the last person I expected to see here, today.

"Funny you should ask that, Sally," a quiet, sophisticated voice says from the direction of Trowa's office.

"Quatre?"

The smiling, pale-skinned blond man nods once, his similarly pale, light hair flopping just a little to hide his aquamarine eyes for a moment before returning to it's styled position. "I'm certain you're surprised to see me here… after all this time."

"Yes," I say, for the moment ignoring Julia, who's just come up and is tugging on the sleeve of Wufei's jacket, which, in my angry haste, I threw on again, not even bothering to do more than throw on a clean shirt and pair of jeans before lacing up my boots. "But I've got a feeling you'll be around after I go up to speak with Lady Une."

He nods, motioning me to move down the hallway and go about my business. As I stride towards my boss's office, I decide to let Julia speak, "What is it?"

"How are you? When we heard the news from L2, and then Lady Une say that you had to be extracted…"

I roll my eyes to myself and pin Julia with a glare. "I'm fine. I'm walking, talking, and breathing, aren't I?" She backs up into the doorway of her own office and allows me to go on my way without any more of her molestation.

I knock on Lady Une's office door and her secretary, Missy, opens the door and then steps out, closing it behind her. The room is cold, and I stare at my boss.

"You rang?" my voice is angry, bitter, and dripping with cynicism. She flinches a little at my tone, something that makes me feel pretty good. I've never had the pleasure of seeing Lady Une flinch at anything, but then, according to Noin, she had a habit of twitching that was something like a flinch when Treize would reprimand her.

"I'm sorry to have called you in, Sally, it's just that…"

I take a look around the room, finally, and notice that the chaos hasn't even escaped her office, though most of the disarray lies in the thick stacks of papers on her desk and the missing window behind her. The air itself is cold, not just the atmosphere, I finally realize, and shove my hands into Fei's jacket pockets.

"Someone infiltrated HQ?" I ask, a little angry. What has any of this got to do with me? I was away… I'm injured…

I'm really close to just going home and getting into bed, pulling the covers over my head and pretending like I never worked here. Then I'll go to China…

Thinking about that trip brings to mind a pair of kind and warm chocolate colored eyes that warm me up, despite the temperature of the air around me. I'm so lost in the imagined gaze that I miss part of Lady Une's explanation.

"… including your office, which was one of the more thoroughly ransacked when inventory was taken… for the time being, I've called everyone back to check in, and we're suspending operations until the police finish their investigation."

"Who would want to hit a government office?" I muse aloud, before it hits me. "Wait a minute," I cut her off as she starts to speak. "We're suspending operations?" she nods. "What about…" my voice cuts off.

"All operatives will be accounted for, despite the hiatus," Lady Une says firmly, standing and turning to face where her window once stood. "Wufei and Trowa will be back before I suspend everyone, Sally, you don't need to worry about that…"

I stand up. She's disgusting me now. That's a lie, and we both know it. If the situation was any different, I'm not quite sure what I would say to Lady Une, but as of now, I… My mind flashes back to the messages on my answering machine. I have other things to worry about. Wufei is a big boy, and he can take care of himself… if not…

If not…

I try, generally, not to think about 'if not's, because I don't find them particularly productive. But then, thinking about Wufei, recently, hasn't been very productive either. If he's not ok, if he can't… take care of himself in this instance… then I'll rescue him after I've seen my father again. Something that my father said in his message… something makes him important, the way his approval was always important to me as a young girl. He is, afterall, family, if nothing else.

Lady Une trails off without a further comment, her eyes evenly meeting mine. She knows that I see right through what will happen. She knows and she has decided she won't lie to me about it. "If there is nothing else?" now it is my turn to be cold and formal, as she was with me on the phone from the shuttle.

"Sally, I didn't put the two of you together to see you loose him like this."

Those are the last words I expected to hear out of her mouth, but as I lift my eyes to meet hers, I find that her back is turned to me. She has nothing more to say. So I shouldn't either. I turn and leave her office, feeling slightly sick to my stomach.

Stranded.

Alone.

I stumble my way back towards my office, and find Quatre waiting patiently outside the door. He starts to speak, but I wave him off, choosing, instead, to head to the elevator. Absently, I see Quatre grab his coat, and follow me.

I can't be in this building right now. Not when the head of our organization is willing to write off two of her best operatives. Not when the voice I heard on the phone told me enough about myself in one forced, tense phrase to make the fact that I may never see the speaker again enough to make me want to march back into Une's office and throw myself from her window…

Not when… I've finally found…

"Sally, wait up!" Quatre calls, shoving his way into the elevator after me. For once, it seemed to be waiting on me, as though it were right of me to leave at that instant. I have my back to the doors and my forehead against the glass back of the elevator, trying hard not to remember him in this space, trying hard not to remember him at all.

I have other things to worry about, I remind myself.

"What's wrong with you?" he asks, laying one hand carefully on my shoulder, waiting for me to flinch or throw it off. "Sally?"

"She's leaving them to die," I choke out, my voice alien to my own ears, and yet, at the same time, it is the same voice I have always had, the one that sneaks out from time to time when I'm being most myself, speaking with my heart and mind in the same thrust.

Quatre recoils, shrinking backwards, "I… I'm sure that they'll be-" but even he cannot finish his sentence, the ever-hopeful, ever-cheery Quatre can be reasoned with, and he knows that what I've said is the truth.

My next words sound childish in my ears, bitter, and cross, even to me, "At least Trowa knew how you felt."

My eyes seek out Quatre's reflection in the glass, the dark gray of the sky outside as the snow falls making it easy to seem him because of the interior lighting in the elevator. His pale skin is flushed with color, and he seems to be going red all the way up to the roots of his hair. "Wh-what do you mean?"

"A little honesty is in order, Quatre," I say, pulling Wufei's coat around me. The elevator is stifling, the stale, recycled air filling with the scent of the medicated salve on my shoulder under my bandages as I adjust the coat, seeping straight through my clothes. "I've been working with Trowa…" the pause I leave adds _his_ name so that I don't have to, "since he came here… I know his new boyfriend, Jean, and I know that the two of you were together…once."

Quatre sighs a little, and then laughs, self-depreciatingly. "My wife still wonders what's wrong with me…" he says absently. "She hasn't figured it out yet."

"What good is a wife?" We're having separate conversations, but it feels neither rude nor uncomfortable, "What good is anything? Life is short."

"Not everyone knows about the two of us, and she can't quite understand what my problem is sometimes, why… why we've been married for four years and she's yet to get pregnant… why it's taken me so long to get around to creating an heir for Winner Corp…"

The elevator dings, second floor. Jean steps into the elevator, tie loosened, shirt half untucked. "Hello Jean," I say, my voice curiously empty. The shock of today is hitting me harder than it normally would. I've simply had too much stress this week. First the mission on L2, then Heero's little 'lesson'… getting shot… coming home to… the equivalent of a natural holocaust in my life…

And now this.

Quatre gives Jean a calculating gaze and falls silent, his inner monologue returning to his mind. But I can read it across his face, _So this is my replacement,_ he sums up the other man's stature, his face, the traits that might have attracted Trowa to him. There is silence between the three of us in the elevator, Jean having returned my greeting already. I haven't introduced Quatre, and Quatre hasn't taken the initiative. I vaguely notice the atmosphere in the elevator has turned a little frigid, and if I didn't know better, I could swear Quatre's eyes are green… Under the blond man's intense scrutiny, Jean fidgets, shifting from foot to foot and watching the display over the door expectantly.

"Quatre," I ask idly as the elevator stops on the lobby level, "What _are_ you doing here? I haven't seen you since…"

He waits for me to precede him from the elevator, and explains as we head outside, buttoning up our coats and slipping on our gloves and wrapping up our scarves. My head is spinning, and my eyelids are heavy. "Winner Corp is responsible for the security company in charge of the building… when I heard what had happen, we sent and investigator… the report should be on my desk at the main office in the morning."

"But that doesn't explain why you chose to come, personally," I add. I'm not quite sure where I'm going, and the words he's using to respond to my queries are going swiftly past my mind, like a shuttle moving at light speed. We take a few steps, slowly, and I feel the entire world start to tilt. Quatre puts a hand out to steady me by taking my elbow. The edges of my vision are dimming…

Quatre ushers me into a limousine, which I hadn't even noticed was waiting for him at the curb in front of Headquarters. "Let's go somewhere else and talk… it's too cold to stand around outside here and do it…"

But the minute we get into the limousine, I feel the surrounding darkness coming swiftly closer, and then, as though I am a small animal and it a large dragon, the darkness swallows me whole.

*

I taught myself, long ago, to forget my dreams. It is smartest, easiest to live as uncertain a life as I do, that way. If you don't remember what your mind finds important to remind you of, you never have to think on it, right?

But some things it is impossible to forget. And I'm afraid the dream I'm having is one of them. The whole of my vision is in black and white, and I cannot see myself. But the place I'm in is achingly familiar. I move towards the house, and just as I am about to get through the front door, it opens, and a smaller version of myself, comes running out the door, dressed in formal school clothing, with my hair in two proper braids, trailing down my back. My brothers, Lin and Samuel, are nowhere to be seen, but the memory of them lingers just outside the scope of my vision. It's a memory I can well remember, the sight outside the front door almost every morning, because the two of them would walk me to school, to be sure I got there safely, before heading off to their own respective schools.

We were never in the same school, my brothers and I. I always wondered about that, but, as most of my youthful questions, they went unanswered in favor of being ignored by my father. If I asked questions, he would notice me, so it was oftentimes much easier just to keep silent.

The sequence replays itself, innumerable times, until I notice something, as I watch my young dream-self leaving the house. The repetitious sequence is not the focus of this dream. Startled, I turn around and find that I can see my body. I lift my hands and find them before my eyes, doing what I command my dream-body to do. Almost immediately after I can see myself, I feel another presence.

"Who's there?" I call out, making no effort to cover my body as I feel a slight breeze wash over my skin, letting me know that I am, in this dream-state, nude.

The answer does not come in words, but instead, as I look around me, the image of myself at varying ages leaving for school, I see, first, a bulge in the image, and then it folds, and through the image another form starts to materialize. Nowhere near as well-kept as I am sure my dream-self is, the other body seems to materialize only partially, and then, with wounds and gashes.

It takes me a long moment to realize that the image of a body I see before me is familiar, someone that I know, but after that first long moment, I know exactly who it is.

"…Fei," I say, my voice steady, and yet unsure. In response, he groans, and lurches forward, like a puppet cut from his strings, and I move swiftly to catch him. "Oh, no," I breathe, unsure of what to do with him now that I am holding him. His body has no weight, only mass, and a faint, flickering warmth to it, that is suggestive more of feverishness than of health.

In the background, the images change, and I see things that I have imagined happening to him. Wufei and Trowa cornered, the cut off telephone conversation… Trowa's grim and hopeless rescue attempt of his partner…

But these images are faster. Wufei's dream-self seems frail, and light, and he slowly becomes transparent, and finally vanishes from my arms.

The image in the background is of the last kiss we shared, and it is bright, and blinding. I blink my dream-eyes, rub them…

*

And as I open my eyes, for real this time, I find myself in a familiar room, staring at familiar things. Quatre is there, speaking quietly to a doctor who is packing up his things in the corner of the bedroom, and I hear a few snippets of words, "Just too much stress, from what I can tell… better in a few days… she needs … and rest. Plenty of it…"

My eyes are heavy, but I am afraid to close them, for fear of what images will come… My arms are warm, my chest feels heavy, as though I were really just holding Wufei in my arms, cradling him against me and shutting out whatever pain he's feeling. I want to call out for him, but I cannot find my voice. Quatre leads the doctor from the room, and I hear the noise of the front door opening and closing. Then there is silence.

The apartment is still, and quiet. The deafening ring of the silence in the air disturbs me, and I hum, softly, longing for some sort of noise. There needs to be some noise… no one in this apartment is dead, or dying, nothing bad has happened here…

And yet, even as Quatre steps into the room, crosses to sit by the bed, and takes my hand carefully, I feel the stillness in the air, the stagnant feel of water that has no outlet, the lukewarm temperature of milk left out on the counter for too long. I can taste it in the back of my throat, and it is sour. I still feel queasiness in my stomach, and a sharp pain in my forehead.

"Try to relax, Sally," Quatre's voice is gentle, and I feel something… a cool, soothing shaft of light, as I close my heavy eyelids experimentally. What he's saying seems so … _right_.

He's still talking, but my eyes drift closed a second time, and darkness takes me again. Only this time, there aren't any dreams.

*

The next time I wake, it's dark outside. Quatre's not in the bedroom, but I can hear the television going in the main room, which means he's probably in there. Experimentally, I sit up, and let out a small yelp. I haven't taken the medication I was given for the pain in my arm, and my body's protesting.

Quatre comes to the door of my room and makes a 'tsk tsk' noise. "Who told you that you were allowed to get up?"

"I did," I respond, looking up at him challengingly. He grins in response, and helps me to sit up properly. "There's… medication on the kitchen table. I need some… and a glass of water." He nods, and disappears out of the room, without so much as turning on the light beside my bed. I stiffly set up a pillow at the head of my bed, and prop myself up on it.

My head is much clearer, and Quatre's got some explaining to do.

He steps back into the room, already talking, "I hope you don't mind that I had you brought here," he says, pulling a chair over from the writing desk in the corner after he hands me the glass of water and the bottle. "But when you fainted, I wasn't sure where else _to_ take you."

"That's fine… but Quatre, _what are you doing here_?"

He chuckles again, while I struggle with the bottle and then take my medication. After I've taken the pill, he says, "When I heard that there had to be an investigator sent to look at the Preventers Headquarters… I thought it would be a good excuse to see you all… it's been rather long since any of us have spoken."

"Is that supposed to be our fault?" I ask quietly, "Even if we had tried to call you… would we have gotten through?"

Quatre finally turns on the bedside lamp, a warm amber glow coming to the room and catching beautifully in his pale blond hair. He's always been a handsome man, Quatre has. And kind.

"Probably not," apparently I've overlooked his honesty as well.

"What made you want to see Trowa so badly?" I ask, biting my lip after I ask the question that's been eating at the back of my mind.

Quatre meets my eyes, in the warm glow from the lamp, and slowly gets to his feet. "You're heading to China?" he asks casually. I don't wonder where he heard that. I'm sure Lady Une informed my coworkers that I'm taking time off, and probably that I'm going to be going to China as well. Having spent any time in the office at all today, with Julia or even Vladimir, he's been informed exactly the truth that they know.

I've never been as comfortable with Quatre as everyone else was. Much like Duo, but not his type, being a woman, I suppose, I 'seek to know too much' at times. I ask people questions, and like the impetuous spirit that my father and Wufei both seem to agree that I have, I expect answers, blunt and honest ones.

"To see my father… before he dies," I say, calling Quatre's attention back from the window as he glances out the blinds. The stricken look that he gives me as he turns back in my direction is enough to stop my words in my throat, and there is silence in the room for a long moment.

His voice is soft, and more consoling than anyone who's yet spoken to me about that turn of events, though his words have nothing to do with it, as he asks, "Do you have your plane ticket?"

I shake my head, looking away from him. It was angering when Wufei forced me to realize that this was really happening, and comforting when Heero spoke to me on L2 about it, but this… honest sympathy… and an unquestioning empathy…

It's almost painful to have someone know so much about you.

"If you like… I can be sure that you get one…"

"I…" I start to speak, but stop myself. Do I really want Quatre's help? So… out of the blue, as it were. A man I haven't seen in years, suddenly coming to the rescue? "I'd hate to bother you," I say. A test, simple and methodical.

I swallow a lump in my throat. Something logical enough to make even… _him_ proud. Quatre shakes his head. "No trouble," and as I search his eyes I see that he means it. "You're hesitant," he says, as though he can read my mind. "I know we were never the best of friends, Sally," he says, turning back to the window, not to escape my eyes, but as though he's searching for something out there, "but the wars were hard on me… no harder, I suspect, than for anyone else, but I was not prepared to deal with them properly… and…"

"Quatre," I say quietly, a sudden warmth in my chest, "you don't have to apologize." He lets out a breath he was holding, and retreats from the window a step, towards the door.

"I should probably go, and let you rest."

"He's going to be fine," I say, my voice steady, stable, and reassuring. I recall Trowa's parting words to me, in the L1 spaceport, and his lack of self-concern. _"I'll do my best to be sure he comes back… to you."_

Even if Trowa thinks there's nothing for him to come back to… other than Jean… the fact that Quatre's here… means that he's wrong. And if Quatre's feelings are as strong as I suspect they are… he'll know.

Quatre pauses, halfway to the door, and turns hopeless eyes on me, "Do you really think so?"

I nod.

He lets out a short breath, and in it I hear a word I haven't heard for a long time, "Nanashi…" No name.

Trowa's name before he was… Trowa Barton. I only know because once, on a mission that he and I were assigned to together, he was wounded, and started talking in his sleep. Trowa trusts me, but he doesn't confide in me. I somehow think that it's not something wrong with me, just something he can't do. I doubt Jean's ever heard him called that… 'Nanashi'…

"I'll be sure you have plane tickets in the morning," Quatre says, stepping through the doorway and out into the living room. When he returns he's got his coat over his arm and is wearing a vaguely concerned expression. "Try to get some rest… I'll lock the door on my way out." He is straightening his coat, a waist length wool camel colored number with two rows of buttons, and pulls on a pair of brown leather gloves. "If there's anything you need…" he reaches into his pants' pocket and pulls out a card and a pen. The card he turns over and writes something on, he takes a deep breath before saying, "this is a number you _can_ get through to me at."

He sets the card next to the lamp, and retreats from the bed, out the doorway into the living room. The television shuts off, and then the living room light. I hear the sound of the outer door close.


	13. Loyalty

In the morning, I wake with a terrible headache. The light coming through the blinds hurts my eyes, but I make an effort to get out of bed. Slowly but surely the chill of the morning wears off as I drift through my apartment, making coffee by boiling water to put in the instant coffee mix - no where near the same, but still better than nothing, taking my morning shower, and making my breakfast.

As I pass by the front door, possibly for the third time, and, for the first time, I notice the large white envelope that's lying on the hallway rug. Slowly, with my bath robe wrapped around me and the collar of the fluffy white terrycloth thing turned up to ward off the lingering chill in the air, I bend down to lift the envelope. There's no address label on the front, just my name in neat, laser printed scrip, _Po Sai Lei_. In the upper left hand corner there's a printed logo, Winner Corp.

St. Quatre strikes again. Anytime there's something horribly wrong with the world, you can be nearly assured he'll be there to step in. I've seen it happen before… at disaster areas, places that governments had turned their backs on and where the Preventers had no jurisdiction… suddenly there'd be a flurry of political activity, and somehow Winner Corp's relief department was on the scene.

Do-gooder Quatre, always dependable and reliable in event of a tragedy, but not quite so entirely good, are you, Quatre? Just as human and selfish and greedy as the rest of us. I saw his eyes when I said Jean was his new boyfriend. I saw the way that he looked at Jean when he got into the elevator. Even the best of them can get jealous, can be human.

Quatre's just like all the rest of us.

I am both gladdened and saddened to know that.

I open the envelope, heading into the kitchen where my coffee and the morning paper are waiting. I nod to myself. Plane tickets, a flight to Beijing and arrangements for a car to take me to my father's home. Thinks of everything.

I check the date on the plane tickets.

Sure enough. Tomorrow morning at eleven am. I head back into my bedroom and take out my remaining luggage. I didn't spend enough time at headquarters yesterday to find out about my luggage, or the clothes that were in them. So instead of taking one large bag I get to take three or four smaller ones.

I dress first, pulling on a pair of jeans and a tee shirt before sticking my nearly numb toes into my slippers, and then I glance out the window. The snowing has stopped, and the city no longer looks romantic to my eyes, as it did two nights ago when I took my cab ride through the city to get back here.

Instead the snow is covered in the grime and oil of the streets, and sits piled on the sidewalk, like dirty igloo walls between the cars and the people. Separation.

My throat catches at that thought. I need to focus on other things or I'm not going to be able to function. I hadn't realized, after so much time, how much I rely on _him_, rely on him just to be able to function from day to day, to be able to work out things, and think things through…

How much I need him.

I remember how shocked I was, during the Mariemaia Incident, when Lady Une called me into her office.

**

"Preventer Water," she addressed me in the most formal manner she has with me, and that alone was enough to set me on edge. But the atmosphere of her office, the dim lighting, the silence that made the near noiseless footfalls of my boots on carpet seem to echo in her office, and the melancholy seeming to radiate from her as I entered her office with a crisp salute, that almost made me turn tail and flee. "I have some difficult news for you… something that I need you to know before you and Preventer Fire head out."

"Ma'am?" my voice was timid, child-like. Everyone has different manners of coping with fear, one of mine has always been regression into a childlike state, when I'm on my own. No Peacemillion, this office with it's high ceiling and its red carpet, no jovial, smiling Gundam pilot to keep my wits about me…

"We've just gotten word from our agents already inside the group… it seems Wufei Chang is with them," Une said, words gentle, voice soft and yet shouting in my ears.

I was shocked, unable to form a decent response. Something in me shattered, some part of me that had been signed away to him the moment I saw his despondent visage that day in China. Something he took from me in that instant that I hadn't quite recognized yet, a part of me that I drew strength from when all things were hopeless and the world seemed to be getting dimmer… The very idea that he could be working against this peace we had all fought so hard… fought so hard _together_ to attain… the strength I had drawn from the memory of the wounded warrior was snatched from me, ripped out like the cornerstone to a foundation.

But I did not break.

"Preventer Water, are you still willing to accept this next assignment?" Une's voice told me everything I needed to know about it. She thought I would turn down the assignment, because of this news. But she was wrong.

My father mentioned that he and I have a very similar spirit. In the past, I had always taken that for granted, and scorned it. But I began to understand, a little, what he meant by that compliment. And another phrase that my mother used to say to us when my father was absent from home, _"Not all strength can come from others. It must also come from within, because some day you will be alone, and then what good will the strength of others do you?"_

"Yes, ma'am," I replied, maintaining a rigid stance. Une both loathed and was comforted by our military background, back then. She wasn't sure how to handle us if not with the strictest formality, and yet she tempered it with kindness, and grace. It was the personality she had inherited from her family, the one she had come back to towards the end of the first Eve War, shortly before Treize's death. "I will accept the assignment."

"You do recognize that you must consider him your enemy?"

I nodded, once, and Une let out a relieved sigh, motioning me to go on about my preparations. I still had some faith in Wufei, even then, but for the sake of my duty, to ESUN and the Preventers, I had to treat him as I would any opponent.

**

It is only now that I can relate that confidence, that trust I had in him, though he had gone astray, to the faith and trust that Lucrezia had in Milliardo when he was working with the White Fang. I did not, at that time, understand why Wufei had chosen to do what he did, but I was certain that not only was there a reason, but that in his mind that reason was worthy of the betrayal of all he had previously known.

And now, now… I think to myself, now, when he needs my faith and support… perhaps even for me to rescue him physically, I cannot. Somehow there seems more danger in his current situation, that I know so little of, than there was in either war. The light shining brightly in the darkness, the light that shined despite itself, seems at the point of extinguishing… and I must walk away from it.

Wearily, I pack. There is nothing left for me to do here. London is but a large, empty city with him absent from it, where I have no friends, and no family. There is nothing for me here, nothing holding me to what I once found so important. Nothing…

Nothing here matters to me.

Perhaps… perhaps I do understand why he chose to betray his principles afterall.

*

By the time my hunger catches up to me, and I've looked through the wide array of frozen food in my freezer, I realize that there is nothing here that I want to eat. Or at least nothing I want to eat after it's nuked to perfection. I cross to the small cork board next to the phone, looking at the menus for various types of take out, and as I pull off one for Thai, a card falls to the floor.

I lean down to pick it up, and read the name and the tight, exacting script of numbers on it. Heero. My mind tastes the word, bittersweet, and I glance up at my clock. Not too late to give him a call.

I suppose I can't say I have no friends whatsoever in this city, quite the contrary, just not ones that anyone can claim to see on a regular basis. I dial the phone number, and it rings several times.

Finally, he answers, "Yes?"

I am tempted to retort something trite, like Wufei's query of 'don't you ever answer the phone with a greeting?', but I don't. That's not the relationship that Heero and I have with one another. "Hi, Heero."

"Sally," he says, not sounding too surprised, and though he is not angry to hear my voice, there is something slightly… sad in his voice.

"I'm sorry I couldn't be him for you, Heero," I say quietly, and then I continue in a firmer voice, "But I'm leaving town tomorrow morning, and I-"

"You don't want to be alone right now?"

I pause for a moment, narrowing my eyes, "Actually, I was going to say I don't want to buy groceries that will only go to waste. What did you mean by that?"

He lets out a long suffering sigh, and I can almost see him rake a hand through his wild, flyaway hair as he says, "I heard about Wufei and Trowa."

_ And_ Trowa? What does he mean 'and' Trowa? "W-what did you hear?"

"That the situation on L1 has escalated, and they've been considered MIA by the Preventers." His voice is empty, sounding much like the one time I heard him repeating a mission's parameters to himself just before he muttered, 'ninmu kanryo.' It startles me, and unnerves me to hear him use such a voice. "No, Sally," his voice is kind, and I can hear the sad smile in his words as he speaks them, "There's nothing I can say to comfort you. The truth will… out, they say. And… I won't lie to you. Wufei may not be coming back."

I hang up the phone. How easily he saw through me, straight to what I wanted. Noin was right, I'm not very good at keeping friends, and the ones I have can see right through me. I didn't call Heero because I felt any great desire to see him, to talk with him, but rather because I had a great desire to see someone, and to hear someone's voice other than my own. Heero, of all the people I know in this city, is one of the few that I can trust with everything. I have had to, and… I choose to.

One would think that Quatre, with his kindness and his gentleness, would be the person I would choose to confide in, after so much time, but instead I chose the silent and morose Heero Yuy. I blink. When I think of him that way, I feel that I am no better than Relena, who took so many years to settle whatever score she felt she had with him, to understand whatever it was she felt for him. For a long time, she saw him as surly and misguided, and she wanted to change him, to make him a better person.

I think he has done a good enough job of that himself.

I leave the kitchen and put on my coat. This may be my last night in London, for a while. I think I would like to spend it remembering things that make me feel happy. I lock the apartment after me as I head out the door.

*

The same restaurant that he took me to, so many weeks ago now, it seems, but in my mind I know that it was only three. Strange to think that, now, as I look back on it. It seems so far away, and the person I was then, the understanding I had, seems someone entirely alien to me. The restaurant's proprietor gives me a warm greeting and offers to show me to the same table I had last time.

Will my friend be joining me?

I shake my head, stubbornly refusing to give in to the sting that thought brings to my eyes. No. Wufei will not be joining me this time. I have to face the idea that Wufei may not be joining me ever again.

He hands me a menu and heads off to stand near the door again, waiting for his next customer to arrive. The waiter comes out and takes my order for a drink. I should've brought a book.

It's going to be a long, lonely night, preceding a long, lonely journey to a house of sorrow. I have nothing to bring to my father anymore but myself. Not the glad tidings or news of his remaining son, no hopes of grand children, or a husband for myself, and no word from the woman he spent so much of his life with. At last, it will be just the two of us facing off, and getting out what we have felt prudent to silently feel towards one another, but never say.

A long trip indeed.

The waiter brings my drink, and an appetizer, which, he nods towards the proprietor, he mentions is courtesy of the house.

Either he's hitting on me, or he wasn't nearly as angry about Wufei and I spending the entire evening in the restaurant, as the waiter mentioned might be the case. Whichever the truth, I nod my thanks to the man and order my food, taking an occasional bite of the appetizer as I do so.

It tastes good, tangy and sweet on my tongue.

Something Wufei would like.

*

I step off the plane in China. The Beijing airport is packed, filled to the brim like airports on television. The last time I flew in or out of this particular civilian airport was during the Eve Wars. I had come 'home' to China in order to help out the rebel groups attempting to free the country from the oppressive leadership, and I wanted to come in unnoticed. At the time, with my face on record as being an Alliance officer, that was easier said than done.

I still remember the outfit I wore. A yellow sun dress with big white flowers in print all over it. I had a white umbrella, my hair pulled high on my head, hanging down my neck in banana curls. I wore makeup, and looked like a real foreigner, someone rich enough to be wearing such a hideously ridiculous get up like what I had on. Bao, who came to pick me up, took a picture of what he then called "the new Sally". I still have it, creased and scuffed, bent up, tucked away in my favorite book, which is in the bottom of my carryon.

Today I look much different. My long sandy hair is pulled back in a traditional bun on the back of my head and my clothes, a dark gray pants suit with a knee length coat, look reserved and conservative. All these things were planned just as carefully as the yellow sun dress with its ridiculous accessories of parasol and purse. Personally, I think it makes me look lonelier, wearing this, than I did playing the offensive American.

I'm easily a head taller than most of the crowd, but not quite tall enough to stand out amidst them. In the years that have passed since the Colonies went up into the sky, there's been enough of a mixture among the population on Earth that the historically shorter nationalities have just about evened out height wise. So the average of human height is just over five-foot-seven. Wufei is six feet, I'm five-nine. Last time I saw Duo he was five-six, but then that was years ago now and I can't say if he's grown more or not. Trowa, Mr. Neanderthal himself, is almost six-three tall, while Quatre is the smallest man standing at five-three.

It's odd that, of all of them, he's the one that didn't grow more. When I saw Heero, he was about my height, I think, but then I don't really remember too well. When you're around Heero you're not focusing on how tall he is.

All around me, the chatter of native language creates a low hum around me. The air in the terminal is slightly better than that on the plane, but still it is stuffy and crowded. Most of the population in China thinned after the colonies went up, the poorer people and the upper classes alike moving up to seek out what fortune the stars held for them amidst the stars themselves. The air here now still reeks of people, and I must imagine that something never change, but endure, and stay the same. I am lost in a bubble of foreign language, not to the area, but to me. Some phrases, ones that I understand and syllables that I can't, jump out at me. It's all right though.

After three years, I've come home. And I am, again, a stranger.

If I was ever not a stranger, that is.

I go to the luggage carousel and get a cart, piling my bags on it so I can better maneuver with a slightly sore shoulder. My leg, still feeling slightly sensitive, is almost completely healed, now, but I still feel it twitch from time to time, like the skin is trying to flick off heat. Coupling the two injuries together makes navigating the sea of activity that my country calls a major international airport enough to keep my mind off my destination.

I head out to the street and hail a cab. The driver hops out and helps put my suitcase, and my hang up bag into the trunk. The carryon comes with me into the cab. Fumbling, I spit out a garbled destination in Mandarin. I'd try for Cantonese, but I don't think that calling my cab driver an idiot, telling him goodbye, or telling him he's bullshit will do me any good.

I called ahead on my cell phone to a neighbor's home, and was assured that my father still lives in the same house from my childhood, but no longer leaves. After a night at a hotel, because it's much later here and jet lag has it's evil claws into me, I've a long, bumpy ride out into the country and my father's house. Not one I relish taking, but something that must be done.

As I sit in the back of the cab, I think that there are always such unpleasant things that must be done.

The same thing I thought to myself during the Incident, when I had to infiltrate the base on X-18999, and I passed him in the hallways.

**

I had been pretty lucky, making it as far into the group as I had, and into the base. I had passed him in the hallways once, when he was escorting Mariemaia to some large meeting that all the combat soldiers had to attend, but neither of us showed any recognition, and so I thought that either he did not remember me, or that he was choosing to ignore my presence. Unfortunately, neither was the case.

I had just finished my reconnaissance on the storage cells, and was about to move to the control room to unlock the cells. Trowa had the more difficult task, but he was better prepared to be in the ranks of Mariemaia's soldiers than I was, and so it couldn't be helped. I stepped around a corner, and found him heading down it towards me. Rather than turn away and blow my cover, or perhaps provoke him into action, I calmly continued down the hallway.

He stopped a few feet away from me, one hand on the hilt of his sword. His eyes, darker than recently, nearly obsidian at the time, gazed at me coldly, heartlessly. He calculated me with those eyes, and whether or not I would be a threat to his goals. I stared back, pausing just out of his range of attack, without a jump or lunge involved, anyway, and stared back evenly.

His eyes asked a question. _Will you stop me?_

I am not sure how mine answered, but I know that he was not my objective. He seemed unsatisfied with the look I was giving him, and so, after a long, tense moment in which I was concentrating much more on simply breathing than planning how to defend myself in case he attacked, I slowly shook my head.

I knew that if he decided to attack me, I'd be dead in seconds.

I am not that sort of a fighter. I can shoot, I can react, I can plan.

But there is something deadly about Wufei, as with the other pilots, a lack of hesitation in killing, in simply acting out what the situation requires, that I have never been able to grasp. Thankfully, in a way. I never want to be able to kill with such surety of action, I never want to be able to act with that sort of conviction.

And apparently, to him, that makes me weak. It is a weakness I can accept, one I am wholly comfortable with, then, if that is what weakness is. He made no response, I wonder that they must have thought there was a glitch in the cameras, we were so still, and then we were moving again, walking past one another.

**

There are always things that must be done. Unpleasant and pleasant things. Situations must be face, eventually. The truth will out, as I am fond of quoting when I find myself in a situation such as this one. At the hotel so soon…

New buildings in Beijing. Nothing new in that concept. There are always new things here… as everywhere in the world known to man, colonies and earth and especially the project Noin and her… and her husband are working on. I wipe my eyes, feeling a strange tickle there.

Tears.

What would you think of me now, Wufei?

I sigh. Probably very little.


	14. Cold Facts

The drive up is proving to be uneventful, and long. But the roads have definitely improved since I was last up this way, so it was more of a scenic tour of my old homeland than anything else. The trip reminded me much of the last time I was here, except the trees glistened in the light of day rather than with the starlight and the moon.

In five years, they've managed to remove the wreckage of the last two wars quite well, and as the debris falls from the sky periodically, our main reminder of the Eve Wars that haunt the recent past, they are taken away quickly. Sometimes, the reminders of the wars are small enough that they fall to the ground and lie hidden. We stumble upon them when we least expect them.

Like now.

I pull over to get some gas for the car, there's a small town here, and I'm shocked to realize I recognize this place. Of course the store window's long since been replaced, and there's no trace of the soldiers that Wufei and I fought here, but it's all achingly familiar. The people seem happier, though, which is to be expected, and there are children playing near the river.

I smile.

It's things like this that make me realize why I bothered to fight in that war so long ago, rather than just surviving as a civilian after the Alliance was taken over, and why I continue to work to keep the peace now, when I could safely go back to being just another woman in the press of the crowd somewhere. It's something we sometimes forget, when we put on the uniforms we wear to work, and fight through the daily swamp.

We're all just human beings, in the end.

I head inside the gas station to pay for the gas I've just taken, and I see my name on the front of the newspaper that the cashier is reading. There's an article about what happened on L2. The Commissioner of the Weapons Regulations has managed to start the case against the Exian corporation, and is asking for anyone with information regarding the case to step forward.

I swear, sometimes the bureaucracy makes less sense than the President. Relena has never been much of a genius when it comes to things like this. Does the Commissioner honestly think that the terrorists that Exian had dealings with are going to step forward and admit to it? Does Relena?

"Twenty-two," the cashier says, not bothering to look up from the newspaper.

I dig into my pocket, and drop the appropriate amount on the counter.

Slowly, the man lowers his newspaper, and for a moment, I think I'm going to pass out. The first thought that comes to mind is that the man before me is Wufei, but after closer inspection, I realize that it is not, could not be him. The man before me is old, older than Wufei by probably twenty years, with gray streaks in his hair.

He nods politely to me, respectfully, but detached, and I back out of the station and move quickly back to my rental car.

I don't know what it was about that man, but he blurred the edges between himself and Wufei. I couldn't be sure about it, without seeing him move, but that man had the same bearing as Wufei, the same look about his dark eyes, the slant to his chin as he nodded to me.

I get in the car. No time to think about that now. If I don't start driving again, I'm not going to make it home before the sun goes down. And I need to be home…

*

The house, with its high exterior wall around the main grounds, is back from the road. I pull up and have to get out into the brisk, early evening air to open the front gate and drive the rental car up towards the house. I pull the coat closer around me as I do so. The gate is a little entrenched in the dirt, I can tell it hasn't been used in some time. As I approach the house, I can tell that no one is inside.

The voice on the phone clearly said that my father still lived in the same house.

Cautiously, half afraid of the house with its tall, wide windows and panels, I climb the steps to the front door of the house and take out my set of keys, trying a few before I find the proper one to open the front door.

If I didn't know that my father was dying, I would think the only thing of him left was his spirit haunting this house. I push open the door, and find that the light switch does not work. If he is very sick, which I am certain he is, and has been moved to a hospital, which I am also certain he has been, then of course he would not have paid the electric bills for the house, and it would've been shut off.

No one is left to come back here, now. Mother is gone, Samuel died long ago, Lin… I swallow, hard, my mind thinking about my older brother. He was always kind to me, and I him. Like so much else, I find it hard to believe that he is gone and I will never see him again.

Outside, the sun dips down out of sight, leaving only the brilliance of the sunset to light the sky before the stars come out. It is too late to go somewhere else for the evening. I move through the house, with a purposeful twist of the flashlight on my keychain, and head in to the kitchen. Mother used to keep candles, in case the power went out. Our home, which has been in my father's family for generations, went through many changes, but its remoteness and its isolation has remained the same. Most likely because we own so much land around it.

I find the candles, sitting still in their wrapped box in the back of a linen drawer, and seek out candleholders. When the power went out, as children we would play in the shadows of the house, unafraid of whatever spirits might be lurking in the shadows. Now, as I light the first white candle and jam it into the wooden candleholder I've found, I don't find the darkness so inviting.

In the morning, I will have to find out what hospital my father was taken to, and make my way there. For tonight, I will sleep here, and see what can be done about getting it ready for him.

If my father is dying, which he seems to know even himself, I won't have him do it in a hospital, some impersonal building filled with impersonal people.

Setting up several candles in the large living room, I turn to the door, heading out to the car once again to gather what out of my luggage I will need for the evening. I'm not quite brave enough, or strong enough, to head upstairs to where our bedrooms were. And something tells me they will be buried in dust and sealed up like tombs.

I went to bed with the candles still burning, and woke up with the warmth of the sun on my face. I had nightmares, last night, and I must've rolled off the couch where I went to bed, because as I wake up I find that I'm sprawled on the thick, old carpet that covers the wood floor of the main room. I sit up, and my back, stiff, complains almost as loudly as my shoulder. The candles, all melted down, have only coated their candlesticks in their wax as they dutifully burned all night, and not onto the expensive furniture they are set on.

I head into the kitchen, the bottle of antibiotics in hand, along with the pain medication. The water still works, probably because it comes almost directly from the river that flows across our property a few hundred yards out the back door. As children we used to swim in the river, during the summer, and our mother would take us on small boating excursions when father was far enough away not to chide all of us for childish behavior. He hated the idea of us in such a small vessel on the water.

I take a glass from the cabinet and fill it with water, taking my medication in a single swallow. Setting foot in this house has made me feel the sorrow that I managed to ignore while I was in London, and while I was on L2. Being in these rooms, where my family once lived, reminds me how empty a house can be with no one inside it.

My lack of appetite is a good thing, I find, because there isn't any food in the house that's easy to fix, because without electricity there's nowhere to keep it good. Unimpressed by the kitchen, I head outside to check the mail box, and find it nearly full. I tuck the stack of envelopes under my arm and head back inside.

Bills, bills, I sit on the couch and pull the blanket from last night over my shoulders. The house is relatively chill, despite the morning sunlight. I find the envelope I'm looking for, with a header from a hospital, and leave the rest of the mail sitting on the low table in front of the couch as I grab my jacket and head out to the car.

*

The hospital is clean, and sanitary. It reminds me of a hundred other hospitals that I've seen since becoming a doctor, and living through two wars. I wonder, momentarily, if Wufei is in one, somewhere, right now. I step up to the reception desk in the main lobby.

"English?" I ask, feeling a little ashamed of myself. I shouldn't be coming here expecting them to change their customs for me. It's a bad habit I've picked up from being a Preventer.

But the young woman behind the counter nods, her dark hair falling in a cropped cut around her face. "Some," she says, the word heavily accented.

I offer her the envelope, and she nods, typing something into her computer. I stand there for a minute, feeling a little silly. I haven't showered, or changed my clothes, since yesterday morning, earlier than this. I must look atrocious.

"Po Zhou Shui is in room 1214," she says, her words slightly clearer. "But he has yet to receive any visitors. May I ask your relationship with the patient?"

I nod, and take out my wallet, "I'm his daughter," I say, showing her my identification. "May I go up and see him?"

She blinks, "Let me make you a pass," she says, typing more into the computer and glancing at the ID. I look almost exactly like my photo, whether that's good or bad I can't really be sure, but the neither I nor the photo look much like my father. I take the small tag badge she hands me and follow her directions to the elevator. I'll have to check in with the nurse's station on the twelfth floor, and they'll show me to my father's room.

I've learned to hate elevators, but the ride up is relatively swift, and uninterrupted. The only other passenger in the elevator car is a doctor wearing a long white coat that seems to be standard in civilian hospitals. We don't speak, but he seems like he wants to. We get off on the same floor, and he heads down the hall to the rooms while I drift over to the nurse's station.

I offer up my badge to the young woman and she smiles at me, "Do you speak English?" she asks, whatever accent she has barely noticeable in her voice. I nod and she smiles warmly. "My name is Emily Zheng, nice to meet you Miss Po. Not all the other nurses here do, it's glad to meet someone I can talk to comfortably. Mr. Po is down this way." She rises and leads me down the hall. I follow a little sullenly, my shoes making noise against the over-clean tile floor in the hallway as we walk. "Since he hasn't had any visitors, I try to look in on him whenever I can."

"Has he… said anything?"

"When he's awake, he speaks pretty clearly, but he's been awake less and less recently. And when he's been awake he's been fairly delirious. He's asked about you, and someone named… Lin?"

"My brother," I respond as we continue our trek down the hallway.

"Will he be coming?"

"No. I got word that he died…"

She stops talking for a while, and turns her eyes back to look down the hall, so that when I glance at her sidelong, I see the profile of her face, and I find the most traditional thing about Emily is that her hair is pulled back, and obviously kept long. Finally, it seems, we reach our destination, and she steps aside.

"In there," she says, politely reaching forward and opening the door for me. "Dr. Richards should be in shortly to check on him for the day, and then they'll bring his lunch around, but visiting hours are until six this evening."

I nod, and give her my muted thanks before I step inside, quietly closing the door behind me. The room is so deafeningly silent that I don't even hear Emily's footsteps as she heads back down to the nurse's station. As my ears adjust to the lack of background noise, I hear the persistent beeping and hum of the machinery monitoring my father's vital signs.

His bed is on the center of the south wall, a large bank of windows on the east wall, there are three chairs on this side of the room, and on the other side, the curtain is drawn, the bed empty. There's a small stand on the far side of the bed with a clock on it. A television sits high on a pedestal near the curtain, and the remote sits near the clock. There are two doors in the room, one for the closet, and the other obviously for the bathroom.

I shrug out of my jacket, trying to keep quiet since he appears to be dozing, and lay it carefully across the back of a chair that is set to the right of the door. I move over towards the bed and take a quiet seat in the chair facing the window, and glance over my father's body.

While I was younger, I remember resenting him. He had many rules that I didn't agree with, and we quarreled quite a bit. In all truth I was closer to my mother, though she was stricter with me. It is as though I knew how far I could push her, and with my father, there was nothing but an endless sea of gray to wade through. At times, he or I would blow up at one another. My friends, I remember, could not understand that about the two of us, and my brothers never commented on it. Apparently it was very unusual that I was allowed to blow up at my father.

In other households, daughters who did so were beaten for such disrespect, but my father never raised a hand to me. My brothers often were struck for breaking the rules they were limited by, staying out late, going out with girls that neither mother or father had met, skipping martial arts practice or getting bad grades, but never me. Whenever I broke the rules, it was something in principle, rather than in practice. I always got good grades, I spent most of my time studying at home, I never went on dates unless father arranged them for me, and the few friends I did have were either cousins or came from families so close with our own that they might as well have been cousins. I did not get into trouble.

I just asked too many questions. I never understood why I had to go on dates, or why we had to do things in the certain ways that they were done. And so my father, rather than patiently explain to me that the way things were done was tradition, responded in the only way he knew. He would get angry, and we would shout.

The door opens, and I turn slightly to look at the person who has entered. The doctor from the elevator, with a sad little smile on his face.

"I thought I'd see you again," he says in unaccented English.

"Well, here I am," I respond, turning back to glance at my father. The clock next to the bed says that fifteen minutes have passed.

"I'm Doctor Shin Richards, Miss Po." He offers a handshake, which I do not bother to grant him. "If you wouldn't mind stepping outside, I would like to inform you of your father's condition. Emily and I spoke briefly, I'm glad that you've come."

*

"We've been running tests since he came in, but unfortunately your father's condition is inoperable."

"What… what is his condition?"

"Your father has cancer, Miss Po, the growth is in his lower back. Perhaps if we had known about it sooner, that is, if he had gotten the back pains he said he'd been having for a several years checked out, we could've done something, but…"

I throw a glare at Dr. Richards. "So it's his fault that he's dying, you mean?" my words are cold, I cannot believe this man is telling me that my father let this happen to himself. And then, the cold fury that I feel dispels. "Several years?"

"He claims he's been having some pain in his lower back for four years, but that he went to a doctor only seven months ago because the pain got unbearable."

"Yes," I respond, feeling only an empty sadness rather than any anger, "That's something my father would do." Hesitantly, I continue. "Three years ago, my mother died, and his relationship with Lin and I… was tenuous at best."

Thankfully, Richards doesn't dwell on that. In a businesslike tone he says, "For now, all we can do is make your father comfortable, Miss Po, and we've been doing that since his final prognosis came in."

"Thank you," I respond, turning slightly to see a nurse wheel a cart with his lunch in. Before I can say more Richards does.

"I've got other rounds to make, and they'll wake your father to have lunch now, so why don't you go and see him while he's awake, and I'll stop by later?"

I nod, and he smiles politely before turning and heading off down the hall. I follow the nurse, Emily again, as she wheels the cart into my father's room, but I stop at the chair with my coat on it next to the door.

"Mr. Po, it's lunch time," Emily says in clear English. My father stirs a little, and she helps him to sit up very carefully, propping pillows up behind his back. "I brought… well, I could never say your favorite, but it at least looks edible today."

He snorts, and I smile a little. Undoubtedly, that's my father.

"Any… news?"

Emily purses her lips, and I see him narrow dark eyes at her a minute. "Actually, Mr. Po, your daughter is here."

I smile a little nervously, and step forward to stand at the foot of his bed. My father blinks, and for the first time that I can recall, there are tears in his eyes. He opens his eyes and I hesitantly step forward, leaning down to embrace my father for the first time in almost fifteen years. He smells of medicine and the papery hospital sheets.

He is warm and alive. For now.

I don't bother to fight my tears, and he murmurs soothingly to me, his voice quietly whispering, "I was afraid you wouldn't come," in broken English.

"What else was there for me to do?" I reply, face buried in his shoulder, "Things are… hard." He nods, and pats my hair patiently. In the background, I hear the door click shut quietly.


	15. Winding Down

Together, in one of his more lucid periods, my father and I agreed that he should come home. His lucid periods have gotten fewer and farther between over the week that I have been here, visiting the hospital daily. He told me where the information relating to his bank accounts was in the house, and I got it back to a point where he could be received there. Emily agreed to come to the house twice a day to help me care for him until I found another, more permanent nurse to come and help.

I couldn't stand to see him suffering painfully on those mattresses and sheets that he didn't know at all. The texture, the firmness, it hurt him, and without much ability to communicate after they increased his pain medication to compensate for it, he had no way to let anyone know. I hate to think what a time he's had in the hospital while I was away at work, but I console my guilt with the thought that I am here now, and doing the best that I can for him.

Since he's been home, he's been coherent in his speaking, and we were able to reduce the dosage of his pain medication. He remembers things more often, but when he speaks, he doesn't seem to recognize me. He thinks that I am my mother, and speaks to me using her name more often than my own. It makes me sad to think about him being that far away from me, and still in his body and his bed.

I find myself taking long walks down by the river more and more often, and spending more and more time reading. Not just the books that I brought with me, by some divine foresight, but also things around the house. The family history according to my father's updates is fascinating, and it helps me to feel closer to him.

Yesterday, he received his first visitor. An actual cousin of his that heard through friends in the area that he was ill drove out to the house, and he and father spent some time talking, while I served them tea. He was particularly well together then, and the two spoke and joked as I remember them doing when I was younger.

"Sai Lei appears to have grown into a wonderful woman, Shui," the cousin said, taking the teacup after I filled it and drinking from it. "You must be proud."

Father nodded, and sipped his own tea carefully, but his eyelids began to droop after that, and I had to show our cousin respectfully from the house. Something told me father would not want to appear weak before family, if he could help it. Emily came upstairs and gave him a dose of his pain medication, and then the two of us said good evening as well.

*

This morning I'm sitting in his room going over the bills. Not that they are very expensive, or a problem. My father's accounts were larger than I had expected them to be, and it appears that whatever he did after Lin and I left home made him and my mother very well off. I brought up tea for him, and we're passing the time. He's staring out the window and I'm working with my calculator and a checkbook.

Six days since he's been at home, and my father hasn't really spoken to me. He eats his food, allows me to clean the house, and his bedroom, but has yet to speak to _me_ since leaving the hospital. I think there may be too many memories in the house for him to separate them from what he's really seeing. I'm waiting for it, all the time, for him to sit up and castigate me over something. At this point, it would be a relief to be addressed, really spoken to, by the slowly dying man I call my father. The nurse should be by this afternoon, perhaps that will arouse some clarity in him.

"Dwyn," no that he doesn't speak. Just the he doesn't see me anymore. Instead I am the physical representation of my mother.

"Yes, father?"

"Where's Sai Lei?"

"In front of you." I recall the words my aunt said to me when I was tending her dying, delirious husband. They had no children of their own, and they were very dear to me when I was a young girl. It happened to him just before I left to join the Alliance. _Create the space._ "She's doing her homework in the corner there, like a good girl." _He may not see you, but he will want you to show him what he needs to see. No man ever goes to rest peacefully without taming his demons._

"She always is."

_ As a woman, you must be his confessor. Never reveal his trespasses after he has burdened you with them. That is why daughters must be stronger than sons. You will be a good daughter, in this manner._

"I'm hard on her, Dwyn. Harder than I need to be. Just as my father was harder on his daughters."

"It is your way."

He sighs, and closes glazing eyes in exhaustion. "I'm too Chinese. She's not Chinese enough - and yet, she's my daughter. She bears a strong spirit in her. One that Lin only hints at, and that Samuel cannot tame in himself. She is quiet thunder, our daughter."

"She gets it from you," I say quietly, unable to look at him when he's like this. I stare down intently at the checkbook.

"Nonsense," my father's voice is growing fainter despite the reproach in his words. Every day I am afraid that he will close his eyes for the last time, especially when he gets this weak. His voice struggles to maintain it's reprimanding tone. "She gets it from you, obviously." His eyes close, and I gather up the tea service, setting my work on the tray with it, and leave the room, quietly closing the sliding panel shut behind me.

As I am heading downstairs with the tea service, I hear a faint, familiar ringing. My cell phone, I find as I trace the sound, setting the service aside to be cleaned up later. I wonder who could be calling me. The name is not familiar, nor is the number. Lady Une hasn't called at all since I have gotten to the house, which must mean that there is no news of Wufei or Trowa, or perhaps that since I am on a more semi-permanent leave of personal business, I am not informed of what is happening.

I chide myself for that thought. Lady Une is many things, but not needlessly cruel. I answer my cell, slipping on a jacket and stepping outside, heading down towards the river where I seem to get the best reception.

"Po Sai Lei?"

I chuckle. The voice on the other end of the phone line is very formal. Very Chinese sounding, although they have no accent, and a different speech pattern. Perhaps someone who is an aficionado with our culture, moreso than I myself am, being partially of this culture. "Speaking," I say with a slight smile. It is good to hear the voice of someone other than my father, who can speak in English.

For miles around not a single neighbor can speak my near native-tongue. Or else they simply will not. Not with me.

"I'm sorry to disturb you, I have been informed by your Chief that you have taken a leave of absence for personal matters, however, I felt it prudent to speak with you swiftly."

"What happened?"

"I am sorry, I have not yet introduced myself. My name is Lawrence Fong, and I am represent a private law firm." Oh no. I am sick of law firms, and their offers, law firms and their bad tidings… "I represent the holdings of one Chang Wu Fei."

"He's alive," I say, voice breathless and defiant. "I shouldn't be getting this call. Wufei is-"

"Of course, Mr. Chang is alive. I have every confidence in his survival instinct and skills, however, with his MIA status, a certain predicament has fallen into my lap."

The confidence he answered my defiance with steadies me more than the tree I am leaning against. "Go on." I push away from the tree and make my way down the path towards the river.

"While he is on active duty, he allows the firm to handle his financial matters. We pay his rent and utilities, pay the car payments he has, and his insurance bills, all from his accounts, while he is away. We work with his personal accountant."

"All right," I respond, not quite sure where this conversation is going. I reach the river, and stare out over the water for a long moment, listening both to the voice on the phone and the noises the water makes against the rocks on the shore, and the animals outside. Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps this is home.

It certainly feels like it, now.

"However, with the status of MIA he has been given, he must be treated as though he were present and unable to act on his own behalf, due to a rather complicated set of regulations we are bound to abide by. Because of those same regulations, the firm looses power of attorney over his holdings until his return."

"What has all of this got to do with me?"

"Mr. Chang named you as his next of kin." Hearing that, I quickly find a seat on one of the large rocks near the banks of the river.

"Why… why would he do that?"

"I cannot answer that for you, Miss Po." He says, waiting expectantly on the other end of the line. I'm not quite sure what he wants me to say. It comes as somewhat of a shock. Wufei and I were always on friendly terms with one another… but I never thought we were so close that he would entrust me with this sort of a thing.

"So," I swallow the lump in my throat, "So what does that mean?"

"I'd like to send you some documents. Bank statements, the checkbook normally used to pay his bills. Copies of records, if you'd like, so that no defaulting occurs on Mr. Chang's part, and his credit isn't blemished."

Leave it to Wufei to find a way to keep his record perfectly clean. What better way to keep from forgetting to pay a bill than never to have started paying for them yourself? I wonder, however, what sort of resources can interest a law firm to leash an accountant to do all of this for him.

"Send what you see fit," I hear myself say. "I'll inform you if there's anything else I require."

"I'll be sure to include one of my cards with the packet I send you, Miss Po, so that you can get in touch with me."

I nod, realize he cannot see that, and so I mumble my thanks. Without preamble, the two of us hang up the phone.

I tuck the phone into my jacket pocket, and spend a while staring at the flow of the river. The smooth motion of the river calms and reassures me to no end. "Aptly named, Preventer Water," I murmur to myself before standing and heading back towards the house.

*

Time passes slowly in the house. It is quiet often, my father sleeps a lot. I check on him every hour, during the day, and twice during the night time, but his state seems to remain the same. The nurse I hired to help me care for him says that it may be a long road he has to travel before he can find his peace, and I believe her. I'm willing to stay… to wait as long as is necessary for him to move on. The packet from Wufei's attorneys came by carrier, and I spent some time reviewing it after I sent off the checks to the various people he owes money to.

For a few days, I try not to pry too deeply into his financial information, but eventually, with only a slightly drooling and fading man for company, anything is better than nothing. Wufei's savings account is impressive. Making a few idle calculations on the amount within the account, he wouldn't have to work… until he was fifty, if he lived in his current manner. His expenses are minimal, but what he does pay for, he takes the time to get properly. But it seems that he gets his imported staples in quantity once a year. There's evidence in here that he takes a trip to Hong Kong once a year, as well as one to India, and Nepal.

I don't recall ever being in Nepal and finding anything worthwhile, but then what should I know about such things? Wufei is often times a mystery to me, his travel should be nothing less. I never took notice of it before because I had other things to do on my vacations, and before a few weeks ago, I didn't think about him much outside of the office.

Funny how now I can't stop.

There is a noise upstairs. Leaving the documents on the table in the sitting room, I head up the staircase and back towards the bedroom. When I came down today, my father was resting peacefully, so I didn't feel the least bit guilty about taking some time to be alone with Wufei's work. It's more than I thought, keeping everything straight.

Sliding back the panel to his room, I see my father sitting upright in bed, on his own. I nearly gasp, since according to the doctors he shouldn't be able to do that without quite a bit of pain. He turns to look at me, and smiles a little, "Lei," he says fondly.


	16. Epilogue

The phone conversation this morning was slightly disturbing. Lady Une had no news on Wufei and Trowa, and after I asked her about that, towards the end of my call, she suddenly was called away from the phone. I told her I would be staying another two weeks to see to my father's funeral and settling the last of his accounts here before flying back to London, if the office was up and running and ready for me to return.

She said that by all accounts they were ready for me to return, but that I shouldn't rush myself out of the house to get back to work. It was the closest way she had of telling me to take my time and deal with my grief over my father before coming back. It was sage advice, I'm sure, but nothing I can follow right now.

There was a study done, one that I read in a magazine in the lobby of the hospital accounting office as I went to pay off my father's medical bills, that says jobs people return to for the purpose of ignoring grief cause more stress, accidents, and in some cases (usually relating to law enforcement and emergency response services) deaths than any other jobs. Including, the article stated, those that were forced positions due to lack of education or financial hardship. What I'd like to know, instead of how dangerous it is to go to a job for the purpose of forgetting grief and pain, is how long people keep those jobs.

I am in the kitchen, staring out the window, blindly. I haven't had the strength to move since I hung up the phone. The house is silent. The equipment brought home to monitor my father's health is packed in its boxes and will go back to the hospital and outpatient care centers this afternoon. My own things are packed up as well, the suitcase I brought with me sits open in my old bedroom so that for the next few days I can live as though nothing had changed, but the drawers in the old redwood chest are empty, as is the carved wardrobe with the faint lingering scent of incense my mother used to tuck in the corners to keep our clothes smelling fresh. Mine still smells faintly of my favorite scent from those days, and all my clothes, despite the fact that I've washed them since taking it out of the wardrobe, still seems to have the smell of my childhood clinging to them. After the equipment goes back to its various homes, I will be going to stay in a hotel. The house, filled now with only the shades of my childhood and the vague ghosts of my memories, is too empty for me to stay in alone.

I know that if I spend too much time away from work, I might just change my mind, again, and decide not to come back at all. I contemplated not returning to the Preventers, and staying in the house here. I could find work in one of the hospitals in the area, and I'd be out of the line of fire. My father's last words to me, because for an hour or so before he passed on, he did see _me_ finally, and spoke to me as I was longing for him to, had nothing to do with me quitting my work to move on with my life, as I had once both feared and hoped they might.

He simply advised me, _"Do what your heart tells you. Following that will lead to your own happiness."_

I thought for a long while on that, so long that I didn't sleep last night. The empty house was silent for once, as though the walls themselves were giving me the time to think about what my father had to say, but I couldn't bring myself to choose whether or not to stay at the Preventers. My mind drifted aimlessly, as it hasn't done in a long time.

Without my father's declining health to dwell on, and with my own recovery from the wound I received on L2, the only thing I could think of was Wufei.

He will be back, my mind repeated to me all evening, and so, as I watched the sunlight creep into the house this morning, I called Lady Une.

When he comes back, the place he will be is in London, whether at his apartment or at Headquarters is immaterial, because I know that's the place that he has to return to. And I want to be there, waiting for him.

The only way I can think of doing that is to go back to the Preventers. It feels like someone is smiling at me in the sunlight filtering through the gauzy curtains in the kitchen window, and I glance outside, seeing the small shrine on the hill behind the house. There will be two more stones put up within the shrine before I leave.

They will bear the names of my father and my brother. I commissioned them from the stonecutter in town with Emily's help. Things here will be left in order. That is very important to me.

And _when_ I leave, it may be here that I am never returning to. I look around the kitchen, and see the memories of my childhood ghosting past me. Lin and I chase Samuel around the kitchen while our mother makes dinner and our father bellows for quiet, he has a headache. Returning home from one of the dates that my father had arranged for me, and finding my mother waiting with silent commiseration and a warm cup of cocoa on the table for me.

I tuck them all away in the corner of my mind, along with my most recent memories, and turn to leave the kitchen.


End file.
